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THE  ANTI-SLAVERY  PAPERS  OF 
JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL 

IN   TWO   VOLUMES 
II 


THE  ANTI-SLAVERY 


PAPERS  OF 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL 


ii 


BOSTON   AND    NEW  YOKK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN   AND    COMPANY 

MDCCCCII 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


Copyright  1902  by  Houghton  Mifflin  §*  Company 
All  rights  reserved 


,  Z. 


CONTENTS 

THE  COURSE  OF  THE  WHIGS  PAGE    3  v 

January  11, 1849 

OUR  SOUTHERN  BRETHREN  10 

January  18,  1849 

POLITICS  AND  THE  PULPIT  17' 

January  25, 1849 

ETHNOLOGY  25 

February  1,  1849 

MR.  CALHOUN'S  REPORT  33 

February  15, 1849 

THE  MORAL  MOVEMENT  AGAINST  SLAVERY  4a 

February  22, 1849 


ABOLITIONISTS  AND  EMANCIPATION  50  I 

March  1, 1849 

GENERAL  TAYLOR  58 

March  15, 1849 

MR.  CLAY  AS  AN  ABOLITIONIST  —  SECOND   APPEAR 
ANCE  IN  FIFTY  YEARS  65 

March  22, 1849 


C   vi   n 

SLAVEHOLDING  TERRITORIES  74-' 

April  19, 1849 

ANTI-SLAVERY  CRITICISM  UPON  MR,  CLAY'S  LETTER      80 
April  26, 1849 

'    PUBLIC  OPINION  90 

May  10, 1849 

MOBS  98 

June  14,  1849 

THE  ROMAN  REPUBLIC  105 

July  12, 1849 

/  FOURTH  OF  JULY  IN  CHARLESTON  112 

July  26, 1849 

MODERATION  119 

August  9, 1849 

CRITICISM  AND  ABUSE  126 

September  20, 1849 

PUTTING  THE  CART  BEFORE  THE  HORSE  134 

October  4, 1849 

CANADA  142 

November  1, 1849 

CALIFORNIA  150 

November  29, 1849 

GENERAL  BEM'S  CONVERSION  156 

December  6,  1849 


C    vii    3 

TURKISH  TYRANNY  AND  AMERICAN  158 

December  13, 1849 

THE  SOUTH  AS  KING  LOG  164 

February  21, 1850 

COMPROMISE  171 

March  7, 1850 

MR.  WEBSTER'S  SPEECH  177 

March  21, 1850 

ANOTHER  WORD  ON  MR.  WEBSTER'S  SPEECH  195 

April  4,  1850 

V^xIPSEUDO-CONSERVATISM  197 

November  14, 1850 


All  these  papers  appeared  in  "The  National  Anti-Slavery  Standard," 
on  the  dates  given  above. 


ANTI-SLAVERY    PAPERS 


THE    COURSE    O*1    THE    WHIGS 

_L  HERE  is  no  need  of  any  speculation  as  vto  the 
course  which  the  Whigs,  as  Whigs,  will  take  in  re 
gard  to  the  measures  in  which  the  question  of  slavery 
is  involved.  The  result  of  the  late  presidentialvelec- 
tion  defines  their  position.  After  the  bargain  by 
which  they  gained  the  victory,  there  is  no  more  free 
agency  left  them  than  the  Constitution  left  to  the 
Northern  States  when  the  compromises  were  once 
assented  to.  They  have  placed  themselves  in  a  dis 
graceful  dilemma,  and  have  only  a  choice  of  treach 
eries  offered  them.  They  must  either  betray  Party 
or  Man.  In  such  a  position  men  are  apt  to  be 
decided  in  their  course  by  the  nearness  and  ap- 
preciability  of  the  retribution  which  is  to  follow,  or 
by  the  chances  of  tangible  reward.  If  the  Whigs 
act  up  to  their  Northern  professions,  the  immediate 
disruption  of  the  party  will  be  the  sure  result.  An 
opposition  may  combine  a  great  many  discordant 
political  elements  and  various  shades  of  opinion,  but 
a  triumphant  party  can  only  reap  the  fruits  of  vic 
tory  by  compactness  and  the  sacrifice  of  individual 
interests  to  the  imperative  necessity  of  union. 


C      4      ] 

Some  moralists  have  asserted  that  men  are  to  be 
judged  rather  by  their  intentions  and  professions 
than  by  their  deeds.  No  doubt  many  Northern 
Whig  politicians  during  the  late  campaign  believed 
themselves  to  be  sincere  haters  of  slavery.  It  was 
pleasant  to  utter  humane  and  generous  sentiments, 
especially  as  the  people  seemed  to  like  them  and  the 
thing  could  be  done  upon  credit.  As  long  ai  votes 
could  be  purchased  by  mere  promises  to  pay))  the 
signing  of  a  name  gave  very  little  trouble.  Warmed 
by  the  enthusiasm  of  the  occasion,  they  were  willing 
to  give  notes  to  any  amount. 

But  the  day  for  payment  of  all  promises  arrives 
sooner  or  later.  Even  those  which  ardent  and  in 
spired  youth  makes  in  solitude  and  silence,  manhood 
will  publicly  demand  the  fulfilment  of,  and  the 
pleading  of  infancy  infects  all  the  rest  of  life  with 
a  suspicion  as  well  as  a  self-consciousness  of  insol 
vency.  The  Whig  notes,  however,  had  too  short  a 
time  to  run.  They  must  be  taken  up  within  a  fear 
fully  limited  period.  If  there  were  a  Notary  Public 
to  witness  their  protest  for  non-payment,  his  fees 
would  amount  to  a  handsome  fortune.  Payment 
might  be  avoided  by  pleading  infancy,  duress,  or  an 
immoral  consideration,  but  we  rather  think  that  the 
more  compendious  method  of  bankruptcy  will  be 
adopted.  The  capital  of  the  old  firm  will  somehow 


I     5     3 

be  juggled  into  the  hands  of  the  new  concern  of 
Taylor  &  Company,  which  will  deny  any  legal  or 
moral  accountability  to  the  creditors. 

We  think  that  the  Whig  party  has  overreached 
itself.  It  has  gained  a  momentary  advantage  at  the 
cost  of  its  existence.  As  far  as  party  action  is  con 
cerned,  it  has  done  its  best  to  strike  a  deadly  blow, 
not  only  at  the  cause  of  humanity,  but  at  every 
kind  of  principle.  It  has  been  hypocritical  and  per 
fidious  in  its  inhumanity.  But  the  mask  is  slipping 
aside  more  and  more  from  the  pro-slavery  face,  or 
rather  it  is  being  discovered  that  its  real  face  was 
turned  southward,  while  an  anti-slavery  vizard  on 
the  back  of  the  head  was  made  to  answer  for  the 
North.  Already  are  the  directors  of  the  party  be 
ginning  to  stone  their  prophets,  men  like  Palfrey 
and  Giddings,  whom  they  have  hitherto  put  promi 
nently  forward  as  lures  for  Northern  and  Western 
anti-slavery  aid. 

All  through  the  last  campaign  the  Whig  presses 
were  finding  fault  with  Mr.  Van  Buren  for  not  being 
anti-slavery  enough.  We  have  no  controversy  with 
them  on  that  score,  though  the  requirements  of  a 
party  which  could  be  satisfied  with  the  owner  of  a 
hundred  slaves  could  not  be  very  great.  But  these 
zealots,  these  out  and  out  abolitionists  (for  the 
nonce),  had  their  doubts  whether  Mr.  Van  Buren 


C   6   3 

were  in  favor  of  abolishing  slavery  in  the  District 
of  Columbia.  His  own  assertion  was  not  enough  to 
satisfy  them.  But  there  is  no  variability  of  tempera 
ture  so  great  and  no  changes  of  temperature  so  sud 
den  as  those  indicated  by  a  meteorological  journal 
of  politics  in  the  free  states.  For  the  two  months 
preceding  the  third  Tuesday  in  November,  all  the 
weathercocks  point  steadily  northward,  and  the 
atmosphere  is  clear  and  bracing.  But  on  Wednes 
day  the  wind  shifts  to  the  opposite  point  of  the 
compass,  and  a  southerly  fog  creeps  gradually  up, 
whose  effects  on  Northern  constitutions  are  exceed 
ingly  debilitating.  Men  of  all  professions  (but  espe 
cially  anti-slavery  ones)  are  subject  to  the  most 
alarming  and  fatal  attacks,  and  disappear  from  the 
community  without  a  line  of  obituary. 

Not  two  months  have  passed  since  the  Whig 
leaders  were  clamorous  because  the  Free  Soil  Party 
had  stolen  their  platform  —  which  means  something 
to  stand  upon  before  election  and  to  trample  on 
after.  Heine  says  somewhere  that  Tieck  was  a  good 
satirist,  but  that  the  progress  of  events  was  more 
bitterly  satirical  than  he.  We  need  no  severer  Juve 
nal  here.  Mr.  Giddings  introduces  a  bill  to  take  the 
sense  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  District  of  Columbia 
in  regard  to  emancipation.  He  very  properly  bases 
his  resolution  on  the  principle  which  was  the  ful- 


C    i    H 

crum  of  our  Revolution  and  which  forms  the  corner 
stone  of  our  system  of  polity,  that  all  government 
is  founded  on  the  consent  of  the  governed.  He 
accordingly  proposes  that  the  vote  of  every  male 
inhabitant  of  twenty-one  years  and  upward  shall  be 
taken.  It  was  not  only  just,  but  peculiarly  proper, 
that  his  motion  should  take  this  shape,  for  it  has 
somehow  got  to  be  the  opinion  in  America  that  the 
slaveholders  are  the  suffering  party,  who  alone  are 
entitled  to  our  commiseration  and  to  a  voice  in  the 
question  of  Abolition.  It  was  therefore  wise  and  ex 
pedient  in  Mr.  Giddings  to  frame  his  motion  as  he 
did.  It  is  the  slave  who  is  the  chief  party  in  interest. 
Yet  for  this  Mr.  Giddings  is  denounced  by  high 
Whig  authority  as  a  demagogue,  whose  only  object 
is  to  exasperate  the  South.  On  the  same  principle 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  should  have  con 
fined  itself  to  a  consideration  of  the  rights  and  in 
juries  of  George  the  Third.  Mr.  Giddings's  error 
arose  from  a  want  of  due  attention  to  chronological 
proprieties.  He  should  have  been  aware  that  prin 
ciples  are  entirely  dependent  upon  times  and  sea 
sons,  and  that  this  motion  should  have  been  made 
before  election.  The  flood-tide  of  party  anti-slavery 
takes  place  every  fourth  November,  and  rises  as  rap 
idly  as  in  the  Bay  of  Fundy.  The  ebb  is  equally 
sudden. 


C    8    3 

So,  too,  in  regard  to  the  Wilmot  Proviso.  This 
was  so  popular  with  Northern  Whigs  a  few  weeks 
ago  that  Mr.  Webster  took  pains  to  claim  it  as  "  his 
thunder."  He  is  probably  sorry  by  this  time  that 
he  ever  burned  his  fingers  with  it.  In  the  debate  on 
the  petition  of  the  Pennsylvania  Abolition  Society 
(February  12,  1790)  Mr.  Madison  said  that  "  they 
might  make  some  regulations  respecting  the  in 
troduction  of  them  (slaves)  into  the  new  states  to 
be  formed  out  of  the  Western  Territory,  different 
from  what  they  could  in  the  old  settled  states.  He 
thought  the  object  well  worthy  of  consideration." 
This  is  the  doctrine  of  reason  and  common-sense  as 
well  as  of  justice  and  humanity.  Before  the  elec 
tion,  this  was  clear  enough  to  Whig  eyes.  But  it 
seems  pretty  certainly  determined  that  the  bill  of 
Senator  Douglas,  which  yields  everything  to  slavery, 
will  receive  enough  Whig  support  in  Congress  to 
ensure  its  success.  We  believe  that  a  majority  of 
the  Whig  rank  and  file  are  in  favor  of  the  Wilmot 
Proviso.  But  the  misfortune  is  that  it  is  in  the 
power  of  a  few  Truman  Smiths  in  Congress  to  con 
trol  for  a  moment  the  destinies  of  the  country.  It 
takes  only  a  moment  to  commit  a  great  wrong,  but 
it  may  require  centuries  to  repair  it.  The  Missouri 
Compromise  (the  second  downward  step  of  the  Re 
public)  was  controlled  by  the  vote  of  one  man  from 
Massachusetts. 


C    9    3 

We  said  that  the  Whig  party  had  overreached 
itself.  The  anti-slavery  sentiment  of  the  country  is 
fast  strengthening  into  anti-slavery  principle.  It  is 
not  a  thing  which  can  be  used  and  thrown  by.  Wise 
political  leaders  would  have  seen  that  its  gains  are 
permanent,  and  that  its  recruits  are  enlisted  for  the 
whole  war.  But  the  Whigs  have  no  positive  prin 
ciple  to  give  them  cohesion.  Skilful  only  in  the  tac 
tics  of  opposition,  they  find  it  impossible  to  take  an 
affirmative  stand.  The  movement  not  of  America 
only,  but  of  the  whole  world,  is  onward.  They  are 
the  destructives  who  endeavor  to  hold  back.  True 
conservatism  employs  itself  in  preparing  a  smooth 
way  for  the  inevitable  future. 

"  Safe  in  its  breast  the  new  moon  clasps  the  old, 
And  round  it  still  its  guardian  arms  doth  fold, 
Forever  turning  fuller  to  the  sun 
Until  increase  of  light  hath  made  them  one." 


OUR    SOUTHERN    BRETHREN 

JL  HE  inconsistencies  of  men,  especially  those  which 
have  their  origin  in  self-interest,  have  always  af 
forded  a  favorite  theme  for  the  satirist,  and  as  long 
as  the  world  lasts  he  will  hardly  be  at  a  loss  for  a 
fresh  text  from  this  longest  chapter  of  human  ab 
surdity.  But  there  is  one  variety  of  inconsistency 
so  regular  in  its  operations  that  we  are  almost  in 
clined  to  seek  for  its  causes  in  some  climatic  or 
physiological  peculiarity.  We  refer  to  the  change 
which  the  air  of  Washington  produces  in  Northern 
members  of  Congress. 

At  home  these  gentlemen  are  almost  tedious  in 
their  eloquent  advocacy  of  the  dignity  of  labor. 
Their  one  idea  would  seem  to  be  that  the  hard- 
handed  democracy  is  the  bone  and  sinew  of  the 
commonwealth.  They  may  be  for  or  against  the 
tariff,  the  bank,  or  the  subtreasury,  but  they  are 
unanimous  in  their  devotion  to  the  cause  of  the 
workingman.  This  is  all  very  fine,  and  their  glow 
ing  and  generous  sentiments  find  a  response  in 
every  heart.  But  who,  after  all,  is  included  in  the 


C  »  3 

term  workingman?  What  is  the  implement  the  use 
of  which  confers  such  nobility  upon  the  hand  that 
wields  it?  Is  it  the  axe,  the  hoe,  the  hammer,  or 
the  plough  ?  This  matter  is  made  clear  to  us  after 
the  arrival  of  the  eloquent  and  philanthropic  gentle 
men  at  Washington.  It  is  not  the  daily  handling  of 
any  or  all  of  the  tools  we  have  mentioned  that  en 
titles  one  to  these  fine  candidatial  sympathies.  A 
man's  palms  may  be  as  hard  as  iron  and  his  back 
may  be  crooked  with  constant  toil,  and  yet  he  may 
neither  be  truly  a  hardhanded  democrat,  nor  a  bone 
and  sinew,  nor  have  any  claim  whatever  to  the  orator 
ical  dignities  resulting  from  labor.  It  is  the  ability 
to  use  a  ballot  which  admits  him  to  the  freedom  of 
the  guild. 

But  in  truth,  so  many  pitiable  objects  present 
themselves  to  the  eyes  of  Honorable  Members  on 
their  arrival  at  Washington  that  their  sympathies 
are  necessarily  diverted  into  other  channels.  It  is 
no  longer  the  "  toiling  millions  "  who  claim  their 
tender  and  respectful  regard.  It  is  now  "  our  bre 
thren  of  the  South  "  who  absorb  their  interest  and 
call  into  active  operation  all  the  finer  feelings  and 
all  the  active  benevolence  of  their  natures.  Who 
are  these  newly  discovered  brethren  of  ours,  these 
objects  of  so  devoted  and  sublime  a  charity  ? 

At  this  distance,  our  too  sensitive  hearts,  still 


C  12  3 

throbbing  with  tumultuous  emotions  called  up  by 
contemplating  the  dignity  of  labor,  we  are  apt  to 
fall  into  a  very  natural  mistake.  We  have  heard  of 
laborers  at  the  South,  and  taking  it  for  granted  in 
our  simplicity  that,  if  a  necessary  nobility  attaches 
itself  to  a  man  who  toils  for  wages,  some  yet  higher 
and  inconceivable  grandeur  must  belong  to  him 
who  toils  for  nothing,  we  imagine  that  it  is  among 
these  Southern  workers  that  we  are  to  look  for 
relatives  so  near  and  dear. 

This  is  an  entirely  erroneous  view  of  the  subject, 
and  a  little  reflection  will  convince  us  that  it  is 
equally  an  unphilosophical  one.  Whether  or  no  we 
are  right  in  surmising  that  it  is  the  power  of  voting 
which  raises  the  Northern  laborer  to  so  high  a  level 
of  humanity,  it  is  quite  certain  that  a  man  whose 
mere  calling  involves  so  much  dignity  and  attracts 
so  much  respectful  consideration  stands  in  need  of 
nothing  else.  It  is  the  person  who  has  not  work, 
whose  hands  are  soft,  who  suffers  the  lifelong  mis 
ery  and  disgrace  of  idleness,  and  is  thus  excluded 
from  the  privileged  classes,  who  is  the  proper  object 
of  our  pity.  It  is  unfortunates  of  this  sort  who 
make  the  hearts  of  Northern  representatives  bleed. 
It  would  be  sheer  arrogance  in  them  to  put  forward 
a  claim  of  kindred  with  those  nature's  noblemen 
who  drudge  on  the  cottonfields  and  in  the  rice 
swamps. 


i:  is  3 

Christianity  involves  us  in  an  inconveniently  large 
family  connection ;  according  to  that  system  we  are 
all  children  of  a  common  Father,  and  if  we  make 
any  distinction  of  fraternity  it  is  to  be  in  favor  of 
our  unhappy  brother  fallen  among  thieves.  Three 
millions  of  such  we  have  at  the  South.  But  the  Con 
gressional  method  simplifies  matters  amazingly,  and 
reduces  "  our  Southern  brethren "  to  a  bare  two 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  or  so.  The  descendants 
of  Ham  are  decided  to  be  children  of  an  tmcommon 
father,  and  therefore  no  relatives  of  ours. 

But  it  is  not  in  the  New  Testament  that  our 
legislators  look  to  find  their  relatives.  Their  family 
register  is  not  inscribed  even  on  those  blank  pages 
between  the  old  law  and  the  new  which  we  might 
suppose  to  be  the  only  portion  of  the  Holy  Volume 
to  which  they  had  devoted  any  special  attention.  It 
is  the  Constitution  which  settles  all  these  tangled 
questions  of  consanguinity.  This  is  our  new  Dis 
pensation  abrogating  the  old,  our  new  tariff  of 
social  and  moral  duties.  This  teaches  us  who  are 
really  our  "  Southern  Brethren." 

It  was  a  happy  discovery,  this  of  defining  the 
limits  of  human  brotherhood  by  degrees  of  longi 
tude.  By  means  of  a  globe  an  American  child  can 
be  very  rapidly  instructed  in  the  simple  elements  of 
geographical  humanity.  East,  West,  and  North,  our 


C    14    ^ 

sympathies  are  allowed  an  indefinite  expansion.  The 
safety-valves  of  our  benevolence  open  toward  these 
three  quarters  of  the  earth.  A  convenient  Manual 
of  Ethics  calculated  from  the  meridian  of  Wash 
ington  might  be  added  to  the  course  of  instruction 
in  our  common  schools.  Thus,  we  may  sympathize 
keenly  with  oppressed  Ireland  and  the  downtrodden 
masses  of  Europe.  Our  detestation  of  tyrants  may 
grow  fervent  in  the  precise  ratio  of  their  easterly 
distance.  We  may  contribute  largely  and  meritori 
ously  to  rescue  the  souls  of  Hindoos  from  Satan, 
and  the  soles  of  Nestorian  Christians  from  the  Ma 
hometan  bastinado.  We  may  join  societies  for  pro 
moting  the  phrenological  development  of  the  Flat- 
head  Indians,  or  for  supplying  the  Laplanders  with 
pure  olive  oil.  In  all  these  directions  we  may  law 
fully  pray  — 

"  that  come  it  may, 
And  come  it  will  for  a'  that, 
When  man  to  man,  the  warld  o'er, 
Shall  brithers  be." 

But,  turning  southward,  our  humanity  gradually 
contracts  itself,  embraces  fewer  and  fewer  objects, 
and  probably  comes  to  a  point  somewhere  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  Emperor  of  Brazil. 

It  has  been  a  matter  of  controversy  whether  the 
New  Testament  should  be  one  of  the  books  read  by 


C    IS    3 

the  pupils  in  our  public  schools.  As  one  chief  object 
of  these  institutions  is  to  fit  the  youth  of  our  coun 
try  for  their  duties  and  responsibilities  as  American 
citizens,  we  cannot  but  think  that  the  habitual 
perusal  of  such  a  book  would  be  likely  to  produce 
mental  confusion  and  be  the  cause  of  error  in  after 
life.  Some  such  cause  as  this  may  be  charitably 
assigned  for  the  divergences  of  such  men  as  Gid- 
dings  and  Palfrey  from  the  strict  line  of  American 
patriotism  and  religious  obligation. 

Or  is  it  barely  possible,  after  all,  that  Jesus 
Christ  may  be  right  and  the  glorious  framers  of 
our  Constitution  wrong?  Ought  we  in  truth  to 
embrace  with  the  arms  of  our  brotherhood  not  John 
C.  Calhoun  or  Zachary  Taylor,  but  the  living,  suf 
fering,  hoping,  and  despairing  property  of  those 
eminent  Southern  Brethren  ?  Is  it  the  brother  fallen 
among  thieves  and  not  the  thieves  themselves  who 
are  to  be  the  recipients  of  our  pity  and  our  help  ? 
Can  it  be  that  the  eye  of  a  politician  too  long  fixed 
in  rapturous  contemplation  upon  the  image  of  Lib 
erty  stamped  on  the  coin  of  our  country,  is  thereby 
unfitted  for  deciphering  the  lineaments,  now  dim  and 
obscure,  of  the  Almighty  Father,  impressed  upon 
three  millions  of  his  duskier  children  ?  These  ques 
tions  have  suggested  themselves  with  more  or  less 
distinctness  to  a  considerable  number  of  men  and 


C  l6  3 

women.  If  America  be,  as  Fourth  of  July  orators 
assert,  the  new  Eden  of  the  world,  these  persons 
have  imagined  that  they  heard  in  the  garden  that 
dreadful  voice  which  demanded  of  Cam  —  Where 
is  thy  brother?  The  signs  of  the  times  seem  fa 
vorable  to  this  little  company.  The  great  onward 
movement  of  humanity  fights  for  them.  The  pro 
gress  of  events  is  their  most  eloquent  lecturer  and 
propagandist.  The  human  heart  is  ever  busy  mak 
ing  them  converts.  They  have  only  to  continue  firm 
in  that  belief  expressed  by  Dryden,  that 

"  There  is  a  necessity  in  Fate 
Whereby  the  bold  brave  man  is  fortunate." 


POLITICS  AND  THE  PULPIT 


w 


E  published  last  week  some  extracts  from  a 
sermon  by  Mr.  Higginson  of  Newburyport.  We 
esteem  such  a  sermon  a  gift  to  be  received  as  some 
thing  more  than  a  mere  matter  of  course  tribute 
to  duty.  Mr.  Higginson  asks  and  expects  no  com 
mendation.  He  does  not  barter  self-sacrifice  for  an 
equal  weight  of  praise.  But  there  are  many  ways  of 
doing  one's  duty,  and  there  is  something  in  doing  it 
bravely  and  generously  which  attracts,  and  deserves 
to  attract,  our  admiration  and  applause.  The  spirit 
of  this  world  is  fond  of  inculcating  a  middle  course 
as  the  path  of  wisdom,  cunningly  flattering  our 
prudence  in  order  to  deceive  our  higher  reason. 
Men  are  wont  to  think  that  they  have  extinguished 
a  dangerous  fire  or  dispersed  a  mephitic  vapor  when 
they  have  succeeded  in  ridding  themselves  of  that 
enthusiasm  of  youth  which  was  truly  their  God-sent 
pillar  of  flame  by  night  and  of  cloud  by  day.  Ec 
lecticism  is  very  good  in  its  way,  and  self-satisfies 
us  with  a  feeling  of  judicial  impartiality;  but,  if 
we  try  to  keep  the  balance  even  between  God  and 


VOL.  II. 


C  18  3 

the  world,  the  flesh  is  apt  to  slip  an  ounce  or  two 
of  overweight  into  the  worldly  end  of  the  scales. 
Eclecticism  as  between  Heaven  and  Hell,  —  which 
is  a  system  of  philosophy  uncommonly  popular,  and 
dignified  with  the  name  of  common  sense,  —  gen 
erally  amounts  to  sitting  on  the  fence  between 
those  two  regions  and  enjoying  at  the  same  time 
beatific  visions  of  the  one  without  losing  a  genial 
glow  from  the  other.  Let  us  thank  Mr.  Higgin- 
son  for  rejecting  this  eclectic  vicarship  of  Bray, 
and  for  giving  us  not  merely  the  exact  measure  of 
duty,  but  for  giving  it  pressed  down  and  running 
over. 

There  can  be  no  fallacy  greater  or  more  danger 
ous  than  is  contained  in  the  popular  axiom  that 
politics  and  religion  should  be  kept  carefully  dis 
joined.  It  is  an  axiom  which  had  its  origin  in  the 
unprincipled  self-interest  of  politicians.  It  is  of  a 
piece  with  the  system  which  would  shut  God  out 
from  the  secular  part  of  the  week  and  imprison  Him 
in  a  particular  day  and  in  certain  buildings.  With 
equal  propriety  the  merchant  might  banish  religion 
from  business,  and  the  tradesman  keep  it  carefully 
away  from  his  shop.  Indeed  it  is  too  often  true 
that,  as  the  clergyman  leaves  his  robes  hanging  in 
the  vestry,  the  congregation  doff  their  religion  to 
be  locked  up  in  the  church  where  it  will  be  kept 


C    19    3 

safely  till  they  need  it  to  put  on  again  when  the 
seventh  day,  appropriate  to  that  ceremony,  shall 
have  come  round  again. 

Next  to  having  no  religion  at  all,  this  kind,  which 
can  be  put  on  and  off  at  will,  is  certainly  the  most 
convenient.  The  African,  when  he  is  meditating  a 
predatory  excursion,  quietly  buries  his  fetich  under 
a  tree,  and,  the  theft  being  safely  got  through  with, 
exhumes  his  wooden  deity  and  allows  him  once 
more  the  superintendence  of  his  conduct.  The  ed 
itor  who  rebukes  some  faithful  clergyman  for 
preaching  against  war  or  the  extension  of  slavery, 
is  only  angry  because  the  fetich  has  been  dug  up 
too  soon.  Had  the  clergyman  decorously  waited  till 
the  thing  was  done,  he  might  have  belabored  war 
and  slavery  in  the  abstract  to  his  heart's  content 
without  being  called  in  question  for  it.  By  this  sys 
tem,  religion  is  put  upon  the  short  allowance  of  lib 
erty  conceded  to  an  imprisoned  debtor.  Kept  care 
fully  under  lock  and  key  during  six  days  of  the 
week,  she  is  allowed  a  kind  of  qualified  freedom 
(within  the  limits)  on  Sundays. 

In  point  of  fact  it  is  not  politics  against  which 
people  would  shut  and  bolt  the  door  of  the  pulpit. 
Let  a  clergyman  preach  a  Whig  sermon,  and  the 
discontent  will  be  found  nicely  proportioned  to  the 
amount  of  Democracy  among  his  hearers.  Let  him 


C    20    3 

preach  a  Democratic  one,  and  it  is  only  the  Whigs 
who  will  go  out  of  church  and  slam  their  pew  doors 
behind  them.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  should  de 
nounce  one  of  the  "  Ultraisms  of  the  Day  "  even  as 
far  as  fifteenthly,  he  would  excite  no  unpleasant 
feelings  except  in  such  of  his  congregation  as  were 
anxious  to  get  to  the  post-office.  It  is  religion  itself 
in  its  application  to  the  life  of  the  individual,  which 
they  would  have  the  preacher  eschew.  It  is  such 
preachers  as  Nathan  that  are  found  fault  with  for 
meddling  with  exciting  topics. 

The  great  hardship  of  the  Christian  revelation 
lies  in  the  exact  closeness  with  which  it  will  fit  you 
and  me.  Embodying  a  universal  truth,  it  possesses 
within  itself  a  principle  of  development  which  ren 
ders  it  a  test  for  the  church,  the  state  and  the  indi 
vidual  in  every  possible  phase  of  society.  It  is  a 
standard  which  cannot  warp  or  shrink,  and  which 
indicates  with  impartial  indifference  every  deviation 
from  the  immutable  line  of  right  and  duty.  It  can 
not  well  be  a  very  comfortable  instrument  in  the 
hands  of  a  faithful  minister. 

The  editor,  virtuously  indignant  at  the  mingling 
of  politics  with  religion,  while  he  fancies  that  he 
has  laid  fast  hold  upon  the  protecting  horns  of  the 
altar,  has  in  truth  only  offered  himself  to  be  tossed 
upon  those  of  an  inevitable  dilemma.  For  he  must 


C  21  3 

either  grant  that  politics  are  too  vile  to  be  admitted 
into  the  company  of  religion,  or  that  religion  is  too 
nicely  holy  for  certain  kinds  of  society.  If  Chris 
tianity  be  good  for  anything,  it  is  good  for  use  and 
universal  circulation.  It  is  not  to  be  shut  up  in  the 
Church,  as  in  a  kind  of  bank-vault,  to  serve  for  an 
imaginary  specie-basis  to  the  everywhere  current 
shinplasters  of  sect. 

Abolitionists  have  no  quarrel  with  the  Church  as 
a  Church,  but  only  with  the  Church  as  it  is.  This 
is  the  reason  why  they  are  odious  to  sect-wrights 
and  divinity-mongers.  They  do  not  deny  the  great 
services  which  the  Church  and  the  Clergy  have 
rendered  to  truth  and  progress  as  the  instruments 
of  order  and  organization.  But  they  affirm  that  a 
Church,  to  be  of  any  benefit,  must  be  in  advance 
of  the  social  ideas  of  the  age,  and  demand  of  the 
Clergy  that  they  no  longer  organize  sects,  but  soci 
ety.  It  is  not  politics  which  they  ask  them  to  preach, 
but  Christianity  itself. 

To  state  the  matter  more  strictly,  it  is  not  the 
Abolitionist  who  makes  the  demands.  They  are  the 
requisitions  of  our  present  social  condition.  Nor  is 
the  Church  so  much  called  upon  to  be  a  Reformer, 
as  to  be  truly  a  Church.  The  clergy,  at  least  in 
America,  are  no  longer  a  privileged  order.  They 
do  not  and  cannot  any  longer  occupy  the  position 


C  22  n 

which  they  held  when  the  mouth  and  the  pen  were 
the  only  vehicles  and  disseminators  of  truth.  They 
are  no  longer  the  only  priests,  and  there  are  other 
pulpits  than  those  in  churches.  The  members  of 
Congress,  the  lecturer,  and,  above  all,  the  editor,  are 
priests  and  preachers,  and  the  newspaper  furnishes, 
a  pulpit  whence  their  voices  may  be  heard  from  one 
end  of  the  land  to  the  other. 

Nevertheless  a  certain  amount  of  prestige  still 
attaches  itself  to  the  clergy.  They  are  still  looked 
upon  as  guardians  specially  set  apart  to  watch  over 
religion  and  spiritual  things.  A  seventh  part  of  the 
year  is  reserved  for  them,  and  their  obligations  to 
truth  are  larger  in  proportion  to  the  opportunity 
afforded  them  to  disseminate  and  enforce  it.  It 
will  be  their  own  fault  if  they  allow  themselves  to 
be  superseded  by  lay  preachers. 

It  is  hardly  to  be  expected  that  the  older  clergy, 
whose  characters  have  been  formed  under  the  pres 
sure  of  a  wholly  different  style  of  ideas,  should 
readily  adapt  themselves  to  the  requirements  of  a 
new  order  of  things.  If  they  are  not  active  reform 
ers,  they  at  least  offer  the  example  of  blameless 
lives.  Let  us  not  question  their  sincerity  to  forms 
which  to  us  seem  empty.  But  all  the  more  ought 
we  endeavor  to  reinvigorate  the  Church  with  an 
infusion  of  the  reforming  and  progressive  spirit. 


C    23    H 

The  Church  has  suffered  here  also  by  having  been 
in  some  sort  an  establishment  and  having  thereby 
necessarily  crystallized  into  formalism.  The  same 
results  have  everywhere  and  at  all  times  followed 
the  same  causes,  and  the  denunciations  of  the  Abo 
litionists  have  never  been  more  severe  than  that 
sarcasm  of  the  Saint  who  said  that,  "  whereas  the 
Church  had  formerly  wooden  chalices  and  golden 
priests,  she  has  now  wooden  priests  and  golden  chal 


ices." 


The  form  of  the  Church  has  always  been  com 
pelled  to  adapt  itself  more  or  less  nearly  to  the  de 
mands  of  the  age.  The  new  spirit  of  zeal  which  is 
making  itself  manifest  in  the  younger  clergy  of  all 
denominations  shows  that  the  Church  is  preparing 
itself  for  a  new  development.  Hitherto  the  Church 
has  been  shored  up  with  external  props ;  it  is  now 
beginning  to  be  asked  whether  she  contains  in  her 
self  any  principles  of  life  and  growth,  and  men  are 
busying  themselves  in  eliminating  the  formula  of 
the  Ideal  Church  which  is  to  be  the  Church  of  the 
Future. 

The  Puritans  divorced  the  Church  from  Art,  and, 
as  far  as  they  could,  crushed  the  poetical  element 
out  of  religion.  But  Art  had  its  ample  revenge, 
for  it  attracted  religion  to  itself  out  of  the  Church. 
The  time  will  come  when  the  two  shall  be  again 


C    24    ]] 

united  and  work  harmoniously  together.  Poetry, 
painting,  sculpture  and  music  shall  be  the  steps  to 
that  new  temple,  and  the  priests  shall  be  ordained 
by  the  laying  on  of  the  hands  of  God  himself. 


ETHNOLOGY 


w, 


B  have  just  seen  the  hopes  of  the  friends  of 
liberalism  and  progress  in  central  Europe  thwarted 
in  a  great  measure  by  foolish  disputes  about  races 
and  nationalities.  While  the  honest  men  were  fall 
ing  out,  the  rogues  have  succeeded  in  getting  what 
was  not  their  own  again.  The  German  Punch  has  a 
print  representing  two  men,  in  different  national 
costumes,  engaged  in  a  furious  combat,  the  point  at 
issue  being  whether  the  name  of  a  certain  town 
should  be  pronounced  Gratz  or  Graetz. 

When  this  matter  of  nationality  is  reduced  to  a 
downright  absurdity  by  setting  the  inhabitants  of 
two  neighboring  villages  together  by  the  ears,  it 
affords  us  only  matter  for  a  smile,  but  it  becomes 
serious  when  acted  on  a  larger  stage  and  by  more 
prominent  players,  though  abstractly  as  ludicrous 
as  before. 

Almost  all  races,  in  proportion  as  they  have 
come  powerful  and  distinguished,  have  endeavored 
to  justify  their  preeminence,  as  it  were,  by  attribut 
ing  to  themselves  a  divine  or  at  least  a  noble  origin. 


I    *«    ] 

Nations,  like  individuals,  when  they  have  risen  in 
the  social  scale,  go  immediately  to  the  herald's 
office  for  a  coat  of  arms  and  a  pedigree.  Had 
the  Pilgrims  landed  at  Plymouth  a  thousand  years 
earlier,  their  exodus  from  the  land  of  bondage 
and  their  arrival  in  the  Promised  Land  would  have 
been  forerun  and  accompanied  by  an  abundance  of 
signs  and  wonders.  As  it  is,  we  are  obliged  to  con 
tent  ourselves  with  vague  assertions  of  our  Anglo- 
Saxon  descent,  the  truth  being  that  only  the  settlers 
of  New  England,  and  of  those  only  a  very  few,  can 
lay  any  probable  claim  to  such  an  origin. 

We  have  no  especial  interest  in  these  assertions 
of  national  nobility,  except  in  as  far  as  they  have 
been  the  cause  or  the  apology  of  national  oppres 
sions.  Men  are  very  willing  to  excuse  any  unnatu 
ral  feature  in  their  social  system  by  tracing  it  up  to 
some  inscrutable  divine  arrangement.  Whatever  re 
volts  from  the  natural  religion  of  the  human  heart 
they  shore  up  with  the  props  of  their  artificial  and 
traditional  religion.  An  inferior  tribe  among  the 
Hindus  sprang  from  the  feet  of  Brahma,  which,  of 
course,  explains  to  general  satisfaction  why  they 
have  always  been,  and  should  always  continue  to  be 
at  the  foot  of  the  social  scale.  In  the  same  way  the 
consciences  of  many  excellent  people  are  not  so 
much  negatively  relieved  as  positively  exhilarated, 


c  27  3 

when  they  have  succeeded  in  transferring  (by  any 
thing  but  a  Baconian  induction)  the  wrongs  of  the 
African  race  to  the  broad  shoulders  of  ancestral 
Ham.  An  anti-slavery  lecturer  was  formerly  pretty 
certain  to  be  received  in  a  strange  place  with  an  en 
tertainment  of  Ham  and  eggs  (the  clergy  and  people 
contributing  their  respective  quotas),  which  kept 
the  promise  of  hospitality  to  the  ear  and  broke  it  to 
the  sense. 

When  the  descent  of  the  negro  races  from  the 
Scriptural  Ham  had  been  pretty  clearly  disproved, 
and  the  application  of  the  curse  entailed  upon  his 
progeny  transferred  to  another  race,  pro-slavery  was 
necessarily  reduced  to  another  line  of  defence.  A 
divine  origin  was  attributed  to  slavery  by  tracing 
its  natural  cause  to  an  innate  inferiority,  both 
mental  and  physical,  of  the  negro  family  of  man. 
It  is  here  that  the  researches  of  ethnologists  be 
come  particularly  interesting  to  Abolitionists,  and 
furnish  them  with  arguments  more  generally  appre 
ciable  by  the  mass  of  mankind  than  those  appealing 
exclusively  to  the  principles  of  abstract  justice  and 
right.  It  is  worth  remarking  from  how  varying  and 
unexpected  sources  the  quiver  of  the  reformer  is 
constantly  recruited  with  fresh  arrows,  and  how  the 
investigations  of  science,  prosecuted  in  directions 
which  seem  the  farthest  removed  from  every  day 


C  28  3 

interests,  have  yet  a  practical  bearing,  more  or  less 
decided,  upon  the  humanitary  questions  of  the  time. 

Ethnology,  or  the  science  of  races,  is  of  very 
recent  origin,  and,  dependent  as  it  necessarily  must 
be  on  glottology  (the  science  of  languages),  which 
is  also  in  its  infancy,  it  must  generally  make  its  ap 
peals  to  inferences  and  probabilities  rather  than  to 
actual  demonstration.  Its  conclusions  may  in  fact 
be  assumed  as  incapable  of  experimental  proof,  since 
periods  of  time  quite  beyond  our  ordinary  concep 
tions  of  duration,  as  derived  from  human  history, 
might  be  required  to  produce  any  foretold  result. 
And  yet  a  sufficient  number  of  examples  may  be 
found  of  various  kinds,  in  localities  widely  sepa 
rated,  and  wholly  independent  of  each  other,  where 
certain  causes  have  produced  certain  effects,  to  es 
tablish  a  firm  basis  for  reasonable  induction. 

The  most  comprehensive  work  on  the  science  of 
races  is  that  of  Dr.  Prichard,  "  The  Natural  History 
of  Man."  It  is  necessarily  somewhat  deficient  in 
arrangement,  because  ethnology  is  as  yet  less  an  ex 
act  system  than  an  agglomeration  of  detached  facts, 
all,  however,  tending  to  one  result,  so  that  it  is 
not  difficult  for  the  reader  to  generalize  for  him 
self.  Dr.  Prichard  is  a  man  of  great  learning,  and 
apparently  of  an  honest  and  well  balanced  mind,  not 
likely  to  be  led  astray  by  theory,  nor  to  form  his 


C  29  3 

conclusions  in  advance  of  his  facts.  He  gives  very 
full  extracts  from  the  accounts  of  particular  tribes 
of  men,  given  by  travellers  of  different  nations  at 
different  periods  of  time,  so  that  the  reader  may 
form  conclusions  for  himself  without  being  obliged 
to  rely  too  implicitly  upon  the  conscientiousness  of 
the  author. 

The  instances  hitherto  collected  by  ethnological 
students  seem  to  put  beyond  question  the  fact  that 
difference  of  physical  structure,  and  of  the  color  of 
the  skin,  may  all  be  referred  to  climatic  causes,  and 
do  not  in  the  least  countenance  the  theory  of  essen 
tial  diversity  of  race.  The  examples  by  which  this 
proposition  is  supported  are  very  numerous,  are 
found  among  ah1  races  and  in  all  quarters  of  the 
globe,  and  are  to  our  mind  perfectly  convincing. 

The  Jew,  transplanted  to  Poland,  becomes  red- 
bearded  and  blue-eyed.  In  England  his  complexion 
grows  gradually  fair.  In  the  East  Indies,  on  the 
other  hand,  colonies  of  Jewish  stock  are  found  who 
are  entirely  black,  and  that  without  the  least  proof 
or  probability  of  foreign  intermixture.  In  China 
they  are  described  as  having  approximated  very 
nearly  in  complexion  and  feature  to  the  native 
type.  This  is  a  strong  argument,  because  the  uni 
form  reluctance  of  the  Jews,  wherever  scattered,  to 
contract  marriages  with  other  races,  puts  the  purity 


C    30    D 

of  their  blood  almost  beyond  dispute,  and  refers  us 
to  some  other  natural  causes  for  a  solution  of  the 
problem. 

These  natural  causes  are  to  be  found  in  difference 
of  climate,  habits,  and  food.  Of  the  influence  of 
climate  a  remarkable  example  is  afforded  by  the  Ber 
bers  inhabiting  a  mountainous  region  in  Africa. 
Their  language,  their  habits,  their  history,  and  their 
traditions  all  prove  them  to  be  of  one  unmixed  de 
scent,  and  yet  they  differ  in  complexion  and  some 
other  characteristics  in  proportion  as  the  particu 
lar  tribes  occupy  a  position  farther  from  the  plain, 
ranging  from  yellow  hair,  fair  complexion  and  blue 
eyes,  to  black  skins  and  woolly  hair. 

We  have  seen  the  influence  of  climate  upon 
complexion  and  the  color  and  texture  of  the  hair. 
Changes  equally  remarkable  in  the  shape  of  the 
skull,  in  the  length  and  general  characteristics  of 
the  limbs,  and  in  the  development  and  tissue  of  the 
muscular  system  are  brought  about  by  the  habits 
and  diet  of  a  race,  dependent  upon  the  climate  or 
some  other  circumstances  of  local  condition.  The 
difference  between  the  Turk  settled  for  four  cen 
turies  in  Europe  and  the  original  race  still  existing 
in  Asia  is  so  great  that  nothing  but  the  clearest 
proof  deducible  from  language  and  authentic  his 
tory  would  suffice  to  satisfy  us  of  their  identity.  As 


n  31  3 

remarkable  are  the  changes  which  have  taken  place 
in  the  races  at  present  occupying  the  western  portion 
of  Europe.  Not  to  speak  of  the  entire  contrast  they 
offer  to  their  original  Asiatic  type,  it  will  be  enough 
to  allude  merely  to  their  dissimilarity  in  general 
features  from  their  ancestors  as  described  by  the 
earliest  trustworthy  observers. 

The  most  important  general  conclusion  to  be 
drawn  from  the  study  of  ethnology  is  that  the  dif 
ference  in  type  exhibited  by  different  races  of  men 
is  not  greater  than  may  be  found  existing  in  indi 
viduals  of  the  same  race  subjected  for  a  long  period 
of  time  to  the  action  of  climatic  or  other  physical 
causes.  We  may  say  further  that  the  conclusion  to 
which  many  inquirers  have  been  led  is  that  the 
white  skin,  and  not  the  black,  is  a  divergence  from 
the  original  type,  effected  either  by  climate  or  by 
the  propagation  of  an  accidental  variety,  such  as 
we  still  find  to  be  produced  among  races  naturally 
black. 

We  wish  that  Dr.  Prichard's  work  might  be  re 
printed  in  this  country,  since  the  high  price  of  the 
English  edition  places  it  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
great  majority  of  readers.  We  have  some  doubts, 
however,  whether  such  a  book  would  pass  the  nice 
censorship  of  the  press  which  presides  over  our 
American  republishers.  Slavery  demands  the  ex- 


C    32    n 

purgation  of  science  as  well  as  religion,  and,  like 
Moliere's  "  Doctor  in  spite  of  himself,"  would  change 
the  heart  from  the  left  side  to  the  right,  if  its  ends 
could  be  served  thereby. 

An  excellent  summary  of  the  book  may  be  found 
in  the  last  number  of  the  Edinburgh  Eeview,  where 
the  reader  will  also  be  able  to  see  at  a  glance 
the  progress  of  ethnological  studies,  and  the  present 
boundaries  of  its  discoveries.  Except  for  purposes 
of  reference,  it  will  be  more  interesting  and  useful 
than  the  original  book,  which  we  have  found  to 
produce  some  confusion  in  the  mind  after  a  single 
reading,  from  the  multiplicity  of  its  facts  and  refer 
ences. 


MR.   CALHOUN'S  REPORT 


A 


THOROUGH  practical  treatise  on  the  obstetrics 
of  mountains,  with  a  statement  of  authenticated 
cases,  would  seem  to  be  still  a  desideratum  in  medi 
cal  science,  although  the  report  of  ^Esop  upon  the 
earliest  recorded  occurrence  of  the  kind  has  been 
sustained  by  a  great  deal  of  experience,  since  the 
public  mind  continues  to  be  roused  to  an  unhealthy 
state  of  excitement  by  the  intelligence  that  an  in 
teresting  event  is  expected  to  take  place  in  the 
mountain  family.  As  a  general  rule,  the  race  has 
been  distinguished  for  its  steady  habits,  but  indi 
viduals  have  been  known  to  fall  into  habits  of  dissi 
pation,  scattering  their  pocketfuls  of  rocks  in  the 
most  spendthrift  manner,  and  some  have  displayed 
a  dangerous  predilection  for  playing  with  fire,  which 
has  rendered  them  very  uncomfortable  neighbors. 
Suppose  some  unbreeched  monster  should  scream 
for  a  crater,  and  an  overf ond  mother  should  indulge 
him  with  so  terrible  a  plaything,  who  would  answer 
for  the  result  ?  On  what  kind  of  a  coral  shall  young 
Master  Mountain  cut  his  ponderous  granite  molars, 


VOL.  II. 


c  34  3 

and  those  canine  teeth,  productive  of  so  much  riot 
in  the  nursery,  and  at  midnight  compelling  the  sans- 
culotted  father  to  an  enforced  enlistment  in  the 
order  of  peripatetic  philosophers  ?  Members  of  the 
family,  old  enough  to  know  better,  sometimes  dis 
cover  a  mischievous  vein :  witness  the  pranks  which 
Emerson  has  reported  of  the  venerable  Monadnock. 
A  dreadful  crisis,  also,  may  be  expected  when  the 
young  aspirant,  just  emerging  from  hillockhood, 
shall  make  choice  of  a  profession.  If  he  should 
prove  of  an  atrabilious  turn,  and  insist  upon  being 
a  volcano ! 

These  and  other  such  considerations  no  doubt 
combined  to  keep  the  public  in  a  feverish  state  of 
apprehension  when  it  was  noised  abroad  that  a  very 
eminent  mountain  was  daily  expecting  her  accouche 
ment  at  Washington.  If  the  hitherto  spotless  Yung 
Frau  had  run  off  with  Ben  Nevis,  or  if  Jim  Borazo 
and  Sary  Nevada  (of  whom  we  have  heard  some  of 
our  returned  volunteers  speak)  had  been  looking 
forward  to  the  birth  of  an  heir,  the  newspapers 
could  not  have  been  fuUer  of  it.  The  services  of 
Mr.  Calhoun  had  been  engaged  as  man-midwife,  and 
everything  seemed  to  portend  some  tremendous  con 
summation.  Nevertheless,  at  the  end  of  the  appro 
priate  period  of  gestation,  nothing  but  a  faint  squeak 
is  heard,  and  it  is  discovered  that  mountains  con- 


c:  35  3 

tinue,  as  in  the  days  of  ^Esop,  to  bring  forth  mice. 
Indeed,  in  the  present  instance,  even  this  legitimate 
progeny  is  smaller  than  usual.  The  offspring  of  the 
Southern  mountain,  like  Burns's  field-mouse,  is  a 

"  Wee,  sleekit,  cowerin',  tim'rous  beastie." 

Diminutive,  however,  as  it  is,  Mr.  Calhoun  has 
taken  the  precaution  to  muzzle  it,  threatening  to  let 
it  loose  upon  the  North  unless  that  section  of  the 
country  maintains  a  very  respectful  and  even  sub 
servient  demeanor.  Probably,  from  long  experience, 
he  conceives  of  the  North,  as  sagacious  Nick  Bot 
tom  did  of  the  ladies,  that  it  would  be  thrown  into 
convulsions  of  terror  by 

"  The  smallest  monstrous  mouse  that  creeps  on  ground." 

Nevertheless,  emboldened  by  such  knowledge  of 
natural  history' as  we  are  masters  of,  we  shall  ven 
ture  to  approach  this  prodigious  little  creature  and 
to  describe  it  for  the  benefit  of  our  readers.  Upon 
a  nearer  examination,  we  even  begin  to  suspect 
either  that  mountains  have  degenerated,  or  this  is 
no  real  mouse  after  all,  but  a  stuffed  specimen,  a 
counterfeit,  introduced,  perhaps,  as  was  rumored  of 
the  Pretender,  in  a  warming-pan. 

Mr.  Calhoun's  document  is  not  so  much  a  report 
as  a  Jeremiad.  It  consists  mainly  of  a  catalogue 
of  the  wrongs  and  grievances  which  the  Southern 


C    36    ] 

Israel  has  sustained  at  the  hands  of  the  Heathen 
round  about.  In  one  respect  it  is  meritoriously  dis 
tinguished  from  the  doleful  palaver  of  Northern 
pro-slavery.  Its  tone  is  gentlemanly,  and  there  is  no 
snuffle,  no  piety  in  it  from  beginning  to  end.  Ham 
is  not  alluded  to,  and  there  is  no  hypocritical 
twaddle  about  the  mysterious  designs  of  an  inscru 
table  Providence.  Let  us  be  thankful  that  we  have 
at  least  a  pro-slavery  appeal  in  which  the  slaveholder 
and  not  slavery  is  defended,  in  which  the  guilt  of 
wrong  and  inhumanity  is  not  laid  to  the  charge  of  the 
benign  Father  of  us  all.  The  Eeport  may  also  claim 
another  merit,  that  of  adroitness.  An  aggressive 
tone  is  assumed  throughout.  It  is  the  South  that 
has  all  along  been  the  injured  party,  enduring,  with 
too  Christian  a  forbearance,  a  series  of  outrages  as 
atrocious  as  they  were  unprovoked.  Mr.  Calhoun, 
from  long  experience,  evidently  understands  all  the 
properties  of  Northern  Dough,  an  article  for  the 
raising  of  which  no  yeast  powerful  enough  has  yet 
been  invented,  and  which  we  sincerely  believe  will 
be  behindhand  in  rising  at  the  last  day.  Mr.  Cal 
houn  probably  remembers  the  expedient  made  use 
of  centuries  ago  by  the  masters  of  the  insurgent 
Sicilian  slaves,  and,  when  other  weapons  have  failed, 
brandishes  the  whip,  trusting  not  vainly  to  the  pres 
tige  of  its  traditionary  terrors. 


C    37    H 

Mr.  Calhoun's  first  tears  are  shed  over  the  fatal 
Missouri  Compromise.  This  was  the  first  attack 
upon  the  rights  of  the  South,  the  first  only  because 
here  the  earliest  opportunity  was  offered.  The  ques 
tion  of  the  admission  of  Missouri  as  a  slave  state 
for  a  time  rendered  the  continued  integrity  of  the 
Union  doubtful.  An  ominous  crack  already  began 
to  run  along  and  to  open  wider  and  wider  between 
the  opposing  sections  of  the  country.  The  glue  of 
the  famous  Compromise  made  all  sound  again  in 
appearance,  but  left  the  cemented  members  more 
liable  to  split  asunder  at  the  first  throe  of  convul 
sion.  The  mention  of  the  Compromise  reminds  Mr. 
Calhoun  that,  in  point  of  fact,  aggression  began 
much  earlier,  and  that  nothing  but  a  spirit  of  self- 
sacrificing  concession  on  the  part  of  the  Southern 
States  rendered  the  original  formation  of  the  Union 
possible.  He  must  go  deeper  down  and  farther  back 
than  this  for  the  origin  of  the  anti-slavery  move 
ment,  and  seek  it,  if  anywhere,  in  the  nature  of 
man. 

Mr.  Calhoun  and  other  pleaders  for  the  peculiar 
institution  seem  to  think  that  the  claim  to  buy  and 
sell  human  beings  gathers  validity  by  the  distance 
of  time  at  which  it  was  recognized  as  a  portion  of 
our  political  system,  and  that  its  respectability  is 
proportionate  to  its  antiquity.  But,  however  true 


C    38    ] 

this  may  be  of  just  and  rightful  things,  it  is  certain 
that  age  only  attracts  a  deeper  damnation  toward 
what  is  wrong  and  unjust.  The  force  of  the  antag 
onism  to  it  is  cumulative,  like  the  poison  of  arsenic. 
Every  year  adds  to  its  horror  and  its  odium,  length 
ening  out  the  loathsome  vista  with  new  objects  for 
indignation,  and  new  claims  for  retribution  and  re 
dress.  The  age  of  slavery,  like  the  gray  hairs  of 
Cenci,  only  heightens  the  sense  of  its  atrocity. 
Shall  it  claim  a  privilege  for  cruelty  because  it  has 
been  cruel  long  ?  Shall  it  sanctify  tyranny  by  the 
plea  of  invariable  usage  ? 

After  showing  what  divinity  doth  constitutionally 
hedge  Slavery  in  the  Southern  States,  Mr.  Calhoun 
proceeds  to  draw  a  charming  picture  of  the  pre 
cautions  taken  to  prevent  the  escape  of  runaways, 
and  of  the  assistance  which  the  pursuing  masters 
received  from  citizens  of  free  states  in  those  earlier 
and  simpler  days  of  the  Republic.  But,  like  other 
pictures  of  a  bygone  Arcadia,  it  unfortunately  is  not 
founded  on  truth.  There  was  never  so  much  or  so 
sincere  anti-slavery  feeling  in  the  Northern  States 
as  at  the  period  immediately  following  the  Revolu 
tion.  This  is  made  evident  by  the  emancipation,  or 
the  movements  toward  it,  which  took  place  at  that 
time.  That  it  was  not  easy  to  recover  fugitives  in 
some  of  the  states,  we  have  ample  evidence.  There 


C    39    ] 

is  now  in  existence  an  unpublished  letter  from 
General  Washington  to  Joseph  Whipple,  collector 
at  Portsmouth,  N.  H.,  asking  his  aid  in  the  recap 
ture  of  an  escaped  woman,  a  favorite  slave  of  Mrs. 
Washington.  The  general  asks  the  collector's  opin 
ion  as  to  whether  an  attempt  to  send  her  back  to 
Virginia  would  be  likely  to  excite  a  popular  commo 
tion  and  lead  to  violent  resistance.  We  have  seen 
the  rough  draught  of  Mr.  Whipple's  answer  in  his 
own  handwriting.  He  displays  a  sufficient  lack  of 
zeal  in  the  undertaking,  thinks  the  woman  could  not 
be  peaceably  kidnapped,  and  concludes  by  hoping 
that  slavery  will  soon  be  abolished  throughout  the 
country.  Whether  any  further  correspondence  took 
place  we  do  not  know,  but  the  woman  was  never 
molested,  and  died  a  few  years  ago  in  New  Hamp 
shire.  A  correspondent  of  the  "  Liberator,"  at  the 
time  of  her  death,  sent  a  notice  of  it  to  that  paper 
with  an  outline  of  her  story  as  related  by  herself. 
Considering  that  fifty  years  had  elapsed  since  the 
date  of  her  escape,  her  narrative  tallied  with  the 
facts  of  the  case  with  truly  wonderful  exactness. 

Mr.  Calhoun  next  laments  the  change  which  has 
come  over  the  amicable  relations  of  the  oppressing 
race  in  the  two  great  sections  of  the  country.  He 
shows  that  in  spite  of  the  figurative  decision  of  Mr. 
Justice  Baldwin  of  Connecticut,  who  pronounced 


I    40     3 

slavery  to  be  the  corner-stone  on  which  the  fabric  of 
our  government  rests,  the  obstacles  thrown  in  the 
way  of  the  exhilarating  sport  of  man-hunting  are 
becoming  daily  more  insurmountable.  A  hundred 
years  hence  it  will  be  almost  incredible  that  an 
American  Statesman  should  exhibit  such  a  tender 
regret  over  the  decline  of  a  pastime  so  horribly 
inhuman. 

The  next  pathetic  remonstrance  of  the  Keport 
is  in  regard  to  the  Extension  of  Slavery  into  the 
newly  acquired  territories.  It  appears  that  it  is  the 
insult  of  the  thing  which  our  too  sensitive  Southern 
brethren  feel  so  keenly.  They  do  not  wish  to  extend 
slavery  to  California  and  New  Mexico,  not  in  the 
least.  They  merely  wish  to  emigrate  thither  with 
their  slaves  !  A  distinction  as  nice  as  that  of  An 
cient  Pistol  between  stealing  and  conveying.  "  Con 
vey,  the  wise  it  call."  They  would  like  to  convey 
slavery  thither,  —  not  to  extend  it.  This  metaphysi 
cal  sublety  indicates  Mr.  Calhoun's  Scotch  extraction 
as  plainly  as  where  he  says,  "  we  would  (should)  in 
a  word  change  conditions  with  them  "  (the  slaves),  a 
piece  of  Christian  fellowship  very  far,  we  suspect, 
from  the  thought  of  the  Chairman  of  the  Southern 
Committee. 

A  Southern  Keport  on  Slavery  in  which  Captain 
Bobadil  did  not  have  a  finger  would  be  incomplete. 


C  41  3 

Accordingly  Mr.  Calhoun  goes  on  to  mourn  that 
partial  surrender  of  independent  sovereignty  to  the 
exigencies  of  the  Union  which  precludes  the  gallant 
South  from  an  appeal  to  arms.  He  seems  entirely 
to  overlook  the  fact  that  such  a  position  of  affairs 
would  bring  about  emancipation  in  the  speediest 
and  least  satisfactory  way.  The  compensation,  in 
that  case,  would  be  exacted  by  the  other  party  to 
the  Institution,  and  would  have  to  be  paid  in  some 
thing  redder  than  gold.  May  Heaven  avert  so 
righteous  yet  so  dreadful  a  consummation !  We  must 
in  justice  say  that  this  is  the  only  part  of  Mr.  Cal- 
houn's  Keport  which  is  absolutely  boyish.  Could 
we  put  its  subject  wholly  out  of  view,  could  we  for 
get  that  it  is  a  plea  for  the  most  enormous  tyranny 
which  (taking  it  in  relation  to  the  age  and  country 
in  which  it  exists)  the  world  ever  saw,  we  should 
say  that  the  tone  of  the  whole  document  was  digni 
fied  and  gentlemanly. 

As  to  what  is  said  in  regard  to  the  number  of 
volunteers  for  the  Mexican  war  furnished  by  the 
North  and  South,  respectively,  we  are  very  glad  to 
accept  Mr.  Calhoun's  statistics.  It  is  gratifying  to 
know  that  the  most  populous  and  civilized  portion 
of  the  country  supplied  only  half  as  many  maraud 
ing  barbarians  as  the  other.  This  was  to  have  been 
expected. 


C  42  3 

On  the  whole  the  Report  may  be  considered  as 
one  of  the  most  cheering  signs  of  the  times.  Its 
tone  of  confidence  is  evidently  an  assumed  one.  It 
is  the  stratagem  of  a  general  who  kindles  needless 
watchfires  in  his  camp  to  convey  an  impression  of 
his  strength  to  the  enemy,  and  who  seems  to  threaten 
an  assault  when  there  is  nothing  to  dread  so  much 
as  an  engagement  with  the  enemy.  There  is  a  slight 
quaver  of  shaken  confidence  perceptible  throughout, 
and  the  effect  of  it  ought  to  be  to  redouble  the 
efforts  of  the  enemies  of  oppression.  In  particular 
we  hope  that  the  friends  of  the  Slave  in  Congress 
will  be  only  impressed  with  the  apprehensions  which 
Mr.  Calhoun  expresses  in  regard  to  emancipation 
in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  will  be  encouraged 
to  more  strenuous  exertion  by  his  prophecies  of 
the  effects  likely  to  follow  thereupon.  We  believe 
with  Mr.  Calhoun  that  the  first  break  in  the  line  of 
slavery  will  be  fatal,  the  speedy  precursor  of  total 
rout.  Already  it  is  more  than  probable  that  deser 
tions  will  soon  take  place  from  the  ranks  of  the 
enemy.  It  is  only  the  first  step  which  is  difficult, 
and,  that  once  taken,  the  rest  will  be  only  matter  of 
course. 


THE    MORAL    MOVEMENT 
AGAINST    SLAVERY 


WEEK  or  two  ago  the  editorship  of  the  Boston 
"  Republican  "  passed  into  new  hands.  The  new 
editor  signalizes  his  advent  by  disclaiming  for  his 
party  any  responsibility  for  the  opinions  of  disun- 
ionists.  But,  in  repudiating  the  doctrine  of  dissolu 
tion,  as  if  it  were  something  odious  and  shameful,  we 
think  he  acts  unwisely.  Men  may  honestly  entertain 
opinions  in  favor  of  a  division  of  the  Union,  with 
no  reference  whatever  to  the  question  of  Slavery. 
If  any  person  who  has  got  enough  knowledge  of 
the  externals  of  history  to  believe  that  the  Roman 
Empire  fell  asunder  because  of  its  vast  extent, 
should  Phillips  publish  a  tract  to-morrow  recom 
mending  a  peaceable  dissolution  in  order  to  avoid 
the  catastrophe  necessarily  incident  to  territories  of 
our  size,  no  editor  would  calumniate  about  parrici 
dal  hands  and  no  orator  would  allude  to  Casca  and 
Brutus.  It  is  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  Ameri 
can  Anti-Slavery  Society  advocates  disunion  on  anti- 
slavery  grounds  that  it  draws  up  to  itself  odium  and 


C    44    I] 

denunciation.  The  Quaker  still  continues  to  enter 
tain  a  traditional  and  entirely  respectable  aversion 
from  a  Church  and  a  hireling  priesthood,  without 
exciting  any  animadversion.  But  let  Parker  Pills- 
bury  or  Abby  Foster  do  the  same,  and  they  may 
reckon  with  tolerable  security  on  being  pelted. 
The  reason  is  plain  enough.  The  Quaker  appeals 
to  dead  George  Fox,  the  Abolitionist  to  the  living 
heart  of  man.  It  is  because  the  American  Anti-Sla 
very  Society  touches  Church  and  State  in  a  rotten 
place  that  it  is  hated  and  feared.  Men  call  it  a  lit 
tle  knot  of  fanatics.  But  a  little  knot  of  fanatics 
is  a  great  force.  Indeed  the  men  who  do  anything 
great  must  be  fanatics.  Poets  prophesy  what  is 
right,  philosophers  see  it,  fanatics  accomplish  it. 

Whatever  opinion  the  editor  of  an  anti-slavery 
paper  may  entertain  as  to  the  evils  or  benefits  which 
would  result  from  a  dissolution  of  the  Union,  he 
should  never  himself  (nor  let  his  readers)  lose  sight 
of  the  fact  that  those  who  urge  that  measure  do  so 
from  an  intense  appreciation  of  the  horrors  of  slav 
ery.  They  are  men  and  women  who  keep  the  pop 
ular  mind  alive  to  an  example  of  self-devotion  in 
behalf  of  a  purely  moral  object  and  charge  it  with 
a  portion  of  the  magnetism  of  their  self-sacrifice, 
who  attack  fearlessly  and  without  question  of  odds 
every  institution,  however  venerable  with  time  or 


C    45    3 

hallowed  with  associations,  which  affords  shelter  or 
vantage  ground  to  the  forces  of  the  evil  principle 
they  are  at  war  with.  Who  that  has  a  heart  capa 
ble  of  the  kindred  thrill  of  heroism,  who  that  in  a 
world  slippery  with  compromise  and  conventionali 
ties  loves  the  firm  feel  of  earnestness,  but  must 
honor  these  faithful  few  ?  Shortsighted  men  may 
not  appreciate  the  importance  of  their  victories. 
Their  results  may  not  yet  be  palpable  on  the  Ex 
change.  But  it  is  no  small  triumph  that  they  have 
achieved  for  themselves  an  existence  and  maintained 
it.  And  courage,  devotion,  loyalty  to  conscience, 
are  not  these  indefeasible  successes  ? 

The  Disunionists  can  afford  to  do  without  the 
Free  Soil  Party,  but  can  these  do  without  the  Dis 
unionists  ?  Wisdom  may  break  down  a  bridge  be 
hind,  but  not  a  bridge  before.  We  were  among 
those  who  were  rejoiced  at  the  Buffalo  Convention 
and  the  formation  of  the  new  party.  Opposition  to 
the  extension  of  Slavery  opened  a  door  by  which 
men  could  escape  from  the  two  irretrievably  cor 
rupt  parties  to  higher  ground  (for  any  anti-slavery 
ground  was  higher),  and  the  Buffalo  platform  offered 
common  footing  where  all  who  hoped  to  achieve  the 
defeat  of  slavery  by  political  action  could  stand  to 
gether.  We  believed  that  the  step  from  anti-slavery 
feeling  to  abolition  principle  would  (with  sincere 


C    46    3 

men)  be  a  short  and  necessary  one,  that  men  would 
see,  as  it  was  pithily  expressed  the  other  day  in  the 
"  Chronotype,"  that  there  was  no  essential  difference 
between  extending  slavery  in  space  and  in  time. 
We  believe  so  still,  and  that  the  leaders  of  the  Free 
Soil  Party  must  advance  to  a  better  defined  and 
more  commanding  position.  After  exciting  the  en 
thusiasm  of  their  followers,  after  showing  them  the 
wrong,  and  crying  charge  !  they  cannot  stand  still 
or  they  will  be  trampled  to  death.  If  to  keep  soil 
free  be  good,  then  to  make  it  so  must  also  be  good. 
If  fetters  must  not  be  carried  into  Oregon  and  Cal 
ifornia,  why  should  they  not  be  stricken  off  in  Vir 
ginia  and  South  Carolina  ? 

Had  anything  been  wanting  to  convince  us  of 
the  necessity  of  a  purely  moral  anti-slavery  organiza 
tion  the  result  of  the  Free  Soil  agitation  would  have 
supplied  it.  Political  parties  have  their  crises  of 
enthusiasm.  Their  zeal  rises  before  an  election  and 
as  naturally  subsides  after  it.  The  course  of  these 
things  is  as  natural  and  as  easily  to  be  foretold  as 
that  of  the  tides.  They  have  their  regular  ebb  and 
flow.  An  unsuccessful  election  contest,  moreover, 
is  a  defeat,  and  defeat  is  discouragement.  During 
the  long  interval  between  election  and  election,  the 
forces  of  a  defeated  political  party  must  suffer  the 
demoralization  of  inaction.  Like  the  troops  of  a 


C    47    ] 

partisan  and  irregular  army,  they  gather  suddenly 
for  an  immediate  object  and  disappear  as  rapidly. 
Their  orators,  wanting  the  customary  excitement  of 
controversy,  become  silent.  It  is  quite  a  different 
thing  to  harangue  a  crowd  of  benches,  and  a  crowd 
of  eager  men. 

Meanwhile,  a  pure  Ethical  Idea  can  never  be  de 
feated.  It  cannot,  indeed,  be  brought  into  conflict 
with  material  organizations,  but  only  applied  to  them 
as  an  impartial  test.  It  cannot  attract  to  itself  the 
rancorous  animosity,  nor  the  imputation  of  motives 
of  personal  aggrandizement,  to  which  a  political  as 
sociation,  however  pure,  is  liable.  It  does  not  pre 
sent  to  the  gross  and  indiscriminating  popular  eye  a 
divided  object.  Its  activity  is  not  sensible  of  any 
seasons  of  peculiar  intensity  or  depression.  It  is  not 
restricted  to  time  and  place  —  the  year  long  caucuses 
are  held  in  the  family  and  the  workshop.  It  knows 
no  distinctions  of  age  or  sex,  but  draws  to  itself  the 
yet  undissipated  sympathies  of  youth  and  contracts 
indissoluble  alliance  with  the  finer  instinct  and  more 
persistent  enthusiasm  of  woman. 

Two  things  especially  absorb  the  admiration  and 
sympathy  of  men  —  practical  success  and  that  wea 
riless  devotion  which  does  not  need  the  stimulus  of 
success.  The  former  is  the  key  to  the  popularity  of 
Taylor,  the  latter  to  the  power  of  Garrison.  People 


c  48  n 

without  ideas  laugh  at  the  man  of  one.  But  these 
men  are  not  so  common  as  is  generally  imagined. 
That  mind  is  of  no  ordinary  strain  which,  through 
long  years  of  obloquy  and  derision,  can  still  keep  its 
single  object  as  fresh  and  attractive  as  at  first.  It 
is  the  man  of  one  idea  who  attains  his  end.  Narrow 
ness  does  not  always  imply  bigotry,  but  sometimes 
concentration. 

At  the  present  moment  the  natural  reaction  which 
has  followed  a  crisis  of  extraordinary  anti-slavery 
excitement  in  politics,  shows  not  only  the  policy  but 
the  absolute  necessity  of  a  distinctly  moral  organi 
zation  against  slavery.  The  Free  Soil  Party  lacks 
any  attraction  which  might  arise  from  success.  It 
has  so  cautiously  secluded  itself  from  every  imputa 
tion  of  fanaticism  that  it  has  deprived  itself  of  an 
other  and  no  inconsiderable  element  of  strength.  It 
has  been  diverted  into  many  by-questions  and  dis 
putes  with  regard  to  the  merits  of  individuals,  and 
so,  in  a  great  measure,  failed  of  concentrating  the 
public  attention  upon  things.  It  has  not  made  itself 
numerically  terrible,  and,  by  its  necessary  devotion 
to  a  candidate,  it  has  lost  the  prestige  which  be 
longs  to  devotion  to  an  idea.  Already  its  best  news 
papers  are  failing,  thus  giving  to  the  movement  the 
appearance  of  a  transitory  convulsion  instead  of  a 
revolution,  and  losing  the  benefit  of  that  supersti- 


C    49    3 

tion  with  which  the  notion  of  permanence  enthralls 
the  fancies  of  men. 

We  say  these  things  from  no  prejudice,  but  state 
them  only  as  matters  of  fact  affording  matter  for 
reflection.  The  Free  Soil  movement  has  done  as 
much  as  we  expected.  If  it  has  not  broken  in  pieces 
the  two  old  parties,  as  we  hoped  it  might,  that  con 
summation  will  be  brought  about  at  no  distant  day 
by  the  administration  of  General  Taylor.  But  the 
necessity  of  renewed  and  continuous  exertion  on  the 
part  of  non-political  abolitionists  is  enforced  by  all 
the  signs  of  the  times.  It  is  they  who  keep  alive 
the  scattered  sparks  which  are  fanned  into  flame 
during  the  gusty  days  of  electioneering  excitement. 
Nay,  at  what  altar  was  the  firebrand  lighted  which 
the  Fox  of  Kinderhook  carried  into  the  standing 
corn  of  the  Philistines  ? 
VOL.  n. 


THE    ABOLITIONISTS    AND 
EMANCIPATION 


N, 


i  EXT  to  the  charge  of  being  possessed  of  only 
a  single  idea,  the  accusation  most  often  brought 
against  Abolitionists  has  been  that  they  have  re 
tarded  the  progress  of  emancipation  and  made  more 
galling  the  fetters  of  the  slave.  If  emancipation  at 
all  hazards  be  the  one  idea  of  the  Abolitionists, 
this  is  the  one  idea  of  their  opponents.  As  far  as 
the  comparison  goes,  the  advantage  is  clearly  on  the 
side  of  the  former. 

From  the  frequency  and  bitterness  with  which 
this  reproach  is  urged,  one  might  suppose  that  an 
amelioration  of  the  slave's  condition  was  the  object 
which  the  whole  community  had  most  at  heart.  As 
that  fine  pagan  emulation  of  the  trophies  of  Milti- 
ades  would  not  let  the  young  Athenian  sleep,  so  a 
purer  and  more  Christian  solicitude  for  those  in 
bonds  would  seem  to  make  uneasy  the  pillows  of  all 
classes  of  society,  and  especially  of  the  politicians. 
In  all  ages  of  the  world  the  Mob  have  displayed  the 
keenest  anxiety  for  the  preservation  of  an  undefined 


C    51    3 

religion,  and  it  was  accordingly  to  be  expected  that 
they  should  not  be  indifferent  while  the  kindred 
cause  of  philanthropy  was  in  danger  of  receiving 
detriment.  It  is  doubtless  not  without  some  of  that 
exultation  which  springs  from  conscientious  self-de 
votion  that  thousands  of  Christian  philosophers  and 
patriots  deposited  their  ballots  for  a  slaveholder, 
sacrificing  their  natural  desire  to  express  immedi 
ately  their  harassing  Anti-slavery  zeal  to  the  yet 
stronger  desire  of  seeing  the  slave  emancipated  at 
an  earlier  period  by  means  of  prudent  concession. 
But  martyrologies  are  not  the  pleasantest  kind  of 
reading,  and  we  gladly  turn  from  the  contemplation 
of  such  sufferings.  Let  us  rather  consider  whether 
they  are  necessary,  and  whether  the  cause  of  eman 
cipation  has  been  in  reality  so  greatly  put  back. 

In  the  first  place  has  there  really  been  a  change 
of  public  opinion  for  the  worse,  either  at  the  North 
or  the  South,  since  the  Liberator  came  into  existence 
eighteen  years  ago  ?  We  select  this  period  as  the 
point  of  departure,  and  not  because  we  have  for 
gotten  Woolman,  Benezet  and  Lundy,  but  because 
these  stand  in  the  same  relation  to  the  Anti-slavery 
movement  in  America  that  Dante,  the  Lollards  and 
Huss  hold  in  respect  to  Luther. 

That  Anti-slavery  was  regarded  with  less  repug 
nance  by  many  persons  at  that  time  than  now,  we 


C    52    1 

are  ready  to  admit.  The  naked  question,  presented 
to  any  mind  not  deadened  by  custom  or  blinded  by 
interest,  was  very  certain  to  receive  an  affirmative 
answer.  But  there  are  many  intellects  so  constituted 
that  an  object  loses  its  interest  in  proportion  as  it 
grows  less  novel.  There  are  many  which  weary  of 
a  long  and  barren  march  without  apparent  results. 
There  are  many  which  estimate  the  common  enthu 
siasm  by  their  own,  and  are  disheartened  by  meet 
ing  with  coldness  and  sluggishness.  Moreover,  at 
the  time  when  the  movement  began,  Slavery  was 
regarded  as  a  distant  and  detached  object.  The 
immense  spread  of  its  roots,  and  how  they  had  forced 
themselves  into  every  crevice  in  the  foundations  of 
Church  and  State,  was  not  even  suspected.  Men 
were  ready  enough  to  condemn  an  alien  sin  which 
concerned  only  their  neighbors,  but  were  soon  satis 
fied  that  what  they  were  themselves  interested  in 
could  be  no  sin.  The  Politician,  the  Merchant,  the 
Clergyman,  each  in  turn  found  that  it  would  not  do 
to  be  an  Abolitionist,  and,  as  they  were  naturally 
unwilling  that  anybody  should  be  better  than  them 
selves,  and  as  the  large  majority  of  the  Community 
was  either  influenced  by,  or  dependent  upon  them, 
it  is  no  hard  matter  to  come  at  the  result.  When 
we  add  to  all  this  the  widespread  influence  of  that 
common  self-deception  which  leads  men  to  believe 


C    53    3 

that  they  are  acting  with  prudence  and  wisdom, 
when  they  are  really  held  back  by  coldness  and 
timidity  of  nature,  or  by  regard  for  what  they  sup 
pose  to  be  their  interest,  we  shall  see  with  how  much 
Anti-slavery  had  to  contend. 

Any  one  who  has  read  Clarkson's  "History  of 
the  Abolition  of  the  Slave  Trade  "  cannot  fail  to  be 
struck  with  the  similarity  of  the  objections  brought 
against  the  advocate  of  that  measure  in  England 
and  those  which  are  constantly  thrown  in  the  way 
of  American  Anti-slavery.  Prominent  among  these 
was  this  same  one,  —  that  they  were  retarding  the 
accomplishment  of  their  object  by  their  intemper 
ate  zeal.  But  the  result  showed  that  success  drew 
nearer  in  proportion  as  they  grew  more  daring  in 
their  reproaches  and  sharper  in  their  denunciations. 

So  far  as  there  being  any  truth  in  this  charge  of 
having  retarded  emancipation,  the  simple  fact  un 
doubtedly  is  that  were  the  Abolitionists  now  to  go 
back  to  the  position  from  which  they  started,  they 
would  find  themselves  less  fanatical  than  a  very  re 
spectable  minority  of  the  people.  The  public  fol 
lows  them  step  by  step,  occupying  the  positions  they 
have  successively  fortified  and  quitted,  and  it  is  ne 
cessary  that  they  should  keep  in  advance  in  order 
that  people  may  not  be  shocked  by  waking  up  and 
finding  themselves  Abolitionists.  The  Garrison  of 


C    54    3 

1831  might  be  a  popular  man  and  a  member  of 
Congress  now.  But  it  is  part  of  the  order  of  Pro 
vidence  that  there  should  be  always  Garrisons  as 
well  as  popular  men  and  members  of  Congress. 

It  would  seem  at  first  sight  that  the  recent  elec 
tion  of  a  slaveholder  was  a  sign  of  retrogression. 
That  the  Whigs  stultified  themselves  and  gave  the 
lie  to  the  professions  of  years  in  nominating  Taylor 
there  can  be  no  doubt.  That  the  temptation  of 
political  preferment  made  many  renegades  is  equally 
certain,  though  there  is  the  consolation  of  reflecting 
that  a  man  who  could  become  a  renegade  was  never 
worth  having.  But  never  at  any  former  presiden 
tial  election  was  the  slavery  question  so  prominent. 
Indeed  it  was  the  only  question.  The  great  quarrel 
which  the  Whigs  had  with  Cass  and  Van  Buren 
was  not  that  they  were  opposed  to  Bank  and  Tar 
iff,  but  that  they  could  not  be  trusted  on  the  slav 
ery  question.  The  very  majority  which  secured 
Taylor's  election  professed  to  vote  for  him  reluc 
tantly  and  as  a  choice  between  two  evils.  We  are 
not  now  concerned  with  the  absurdity  of  voting  for 
a  slaveholder  to  restrain  slavery,  but  only  with  the 
ostensible  motives  which  influenced  a  very  large 
number  of  voters.  The  motives  which  men  pretend 
for  their  conduct  show  clearly  what  public  sentiment 
is.  So  widely  spread  was  the  Anti-slavery  feeling, 


C    55    3 

and  so  exactly  did  the  Buffalo  Convention  harmo 
nize  with  the  public  sympathies,  that  even  wary  pol 
iticians  were  for  the  moment  staggered.  Had  the 
election  taken  place  in  August,  the  result  would 
have  been  widely  different.  Three  months  gave 
time  for  enthusiasm  to  subside,  for  old  associations 
to  regain  their  hold,  and  for  the  whole  disorgan 
ized  machinery  of  party  to  be  repaired  and  set  in 
motion. 

So  much  for  the  retarding  effect  of  the  Anti-slav 
ery  agitation  at  the  North.  At  the  South,  if  vio 
lent  opposition  has  been  excited,  it  has  been  a  mere 
offset  to  equal  violence  on  the  other  side.  It  has 
arisen  from  the  fact  that  the  defenders  of  slavery 
instinctively  felt  that  their  weakness  was  in  their 
own  camp.  How  could  what  is  in  its  own  nature  the 
most  unreasonable  of  institutions,  be  reasonably  de 
fended  ?  How  could  that  which  is  founded  on  force 
and  fraud  be  gently  and  honestly  supported?  How 
could  the  vilest  of  existing  tyrannies  find  countenance 
from  any  but  the  vilest  arguments  ?  But  it  is  said 
that  the  condition  of  the  slave  has  grown  worse,  and 
that  the  laws  against  him  have  been  made  more 
severe.  If  this  were  true,  the  lapse  of  eighteen 
years,  and  the  necessity  of  other  injustices  which 
one  injustice  entails  would  be  enough  to  account  for 
it.  But  it  is  not  true.  The  efforts  of  the  Aboli- 


C    56    3 

tionists  have  drawn  so  much  attention  toward  slav 
ery,  and  their  sentiments  have  found  so  much  sym 
pathy  even  in  some  of  the  Slave  States  themselves, 
that  every  evil,  cruelty  and  misery  belonging  to 
the  system  has  become  painfully  conspicuous.  The 
slaveholder  in  the  remotest  rice  swamp  of  Florida 
feels  that  the  walls  have  eyes  and  ears. 

The  fanaticism  of  the  Abolitionists  has  retarded 
emancipation,  just  in  the  same  way  that  Luther 
retarded  the  Reformation.  Considering  the  im 
mense  odds  against  which  they  have  had  to  struggle, 
they  have  brought  about  a  revolution  in  a  wonder 
fully  short  space  of  time.  It  does  not  matter  that 
the  advocates  of  emancipation  in  the  Slave  States 
shrink  from  accepting  the  abolition  doctrine  in  all 
its  length  and  breadth.  However  they  may  deny 
all  sympathy  and  connection  with  those  whom  it  is 
the  fashion  falsely  to  call  advocates  of  violent  meas 
ures,  it  is  no  less  plain  that  their  strength  is  derived 
from  those  very  persons.  It  is  these  fanatics  who 
have  put  them  in  connection  with  the  moral  senti 
ment  of  the  whole  world,  and  who  make  their  op 
ponents  feel  that  behind  them  He  encamped  the 
great  moving  forces  which  have  given  every  forward 
impulse  to  man.  Along  the  slender  wire  of  North 
ern  Anti-slavery  the  Southern  Abolitionist  receives 
the  inspiring  influx  of  the  religious  sentiment,  the 


C    57    3 

love  of  freedom,  and  the  humanity  of  entire  Chris 
tendom.  Slavery  has  nothing  behind  it  but  the 
sheer  precipice,  nothing  before  it  but  the  inevitable 
retributive  Doom. 


GENERAL    TAYLOR 


T 


HE  long  succession  of  Democratic  rulers  has  at 
length  been  broken.  Mr.  Polk  has  laid  aside  and 
General  Taylor  has  put  on  that  striking  likeness 
of  a  kingly  crown  which  our  republican  rulers  are 
permitted  to  wear.  But,  though  an  undoubted 
change  has  taken  place  in  the  person  of  our  chief 
magistrate,  and  a  presumed  one  in  his  political 
principles,  the  Dynasty  remains  the  same,  and  one 
slaveholder  has  quietly  taken  the  place  of  another 
in  the  presidential  chair.  Whatever  doubts  there 
may  be  with  regard  to  some  articles  of  the  Consti 
tution,  it  seems  to  be  generally  understood  that  there 
exists  somewhere  in  that  august  instrument  a  pro 
vision  settling  the  order  of  succession  in  the  South 
ern  line.  It  is  an  instrument  on  which  the  politi 
cian's  cunning  finger  can  play  what  stop  he  please  — 
only  it  must  be  to  a  slaveholding  tune. 

As  far  as  the  North  is  concerned,  General  Tay 
lor  comes  into  office  as  the  avowed  opponent  of  the 
extension  of  slavery.  The  assertions  of  the  Whig 
Press  upon  this  point  were  unanimous  throughout 


C    59    ] 

the  Free  States,  and  here  and  there  a  fortunate  gen 
tleman  carried  in  his  pocket  a  letter  from  the  Can 
didate  provisionally  defining  his  position  as  Presi 
dent.  These  letters  the  inteUigent  voters  of  the 
country  were  not  permitted  to  see,  and  we  have  very 
great  doubts  whether  they  will  ever  form  part  of 
any  collection  which  some  future  Sparks  may  make 
of  the  writings  of  the  second  father  of  his  country. 
It  was  enough  that  they  entirely  satisfied  the  Anti- 
slavery  requirements  of  such  original  (highly  ori 
ginal)  Abolitionists  as  Mr.  Lawrence.  It  has  been 
an  honor  to  that  gentleman  and  a  benefit  to  the 
community  that  his  pocket  has  not  generally  been 
so  retentive  or  so  tightly  buttoned  as  on  this  partic 
ular  occasion. 

But  General  Taylor  is  the  representative  of  the 
Whig  Party,  and  that  party  has  hitherto  been  the 
Anti-slavery  party  of  the  Country.  It  has  battled 
for  the  Right  of  Petition,  and  has  elected  such  men 
as  John  Quincy  Adams,  Giddings,  and  Palfrey.  This 
was  to  a  certain  extent  true  as  long  as  the  Whigs 
stood  in  need  of  Anti-slavery  aid,  and  thought  that 
aid  worth  bidding  for.  At  that  time  not  Garrison 
himself  could  have  been  more  bitter  in  denouncing 
the  unholy  alliance  between  Northern  Democracy 
and  Southern  Patriarchalism.  But  this  was  the  jeal 
ousy  of  disappointed  rivalry.  The  South,  fickle  in 


C  6o  3 

everything  but  devotion  to  itself,  and  the  Whig 
Party,  destitute  of  every  principle  but  that  of  self- 
preservation,  have  struck  up  a  match.  The  Whigs, 
compulsory  renegades  from  Anti-slavery  doctrines 
which  they  never  sincerely  believed  in,  assail  the 
consistent  men  in  their  late  party  with  all  that  blus 
tering  rancor  with  which  renegades  endeavor  to  be 
wilder  themselves  out  of  the  feeling  of  their  own 
self-contempt.  Having  caught  their  fish,  they  toss 
regardlessly  overboard  the  bait  no  longer  fresh. 
They  would  make  an  auto  dafe  of  Giddings  and 
Palfrey  if  they  had  the  power  and  the  opportunity. 
It  would  be  laughable  were  it  not  disgusting  to 
read  the  diatribes  of  some  of  the  editorial  turn 
coats.  It  is  common  to  call  such  personages  Bene 
dict  Arnolds  and  Judases.  But  the  memory  even  of 
traitors  should  be  treated  with  justice.  Arnold  was 
a  man  of  ability,  and  Judas  had  so  much  right  feel 
ing  left  in  him  as  to  go  and  hang  himself.  We  can 
only  say  that  if  the  Whig  Party  paid  thirty  pieces 
of  silver  (even  of  the  smallest  denomination)  for 
some  of  these  gentry,  they  paid  a  most  unconscion 
able  price. 

In  speaking  of  parties,  it  is  only  just  to  make  a 
distinction  between  the  leaders  and  the  led.  We 
believe  that  the  majority  of  the  Whig  Party  at  the 
North  have  never  been  dissatisfied  with  anything 


C  6l  1 

but  the  meagreness  of  the  Anti-slavery  diet  allowed 
them  by  their  providers.  But  the  masses  of  a  party 
are  necessarily  passive  and  not  active  politicians. 
They  are  accustomed  to  order  and  subordination, 
and  to  have  their  work  cut  out  for  them  by  the 
comparatively  few  who  make  politics  their  profes 
sion.  Discipline  is  as  necessary  as  in  an  army. 
They  obey  orders  without  asking  any  questions. 
The  officers  of  this  great  voting  militia  are  men  who 
embark  in  politics  as  in  any  other  trade.  In  the 
ordinary  transactions  of  life  they  have  morals  as  high 
as  the  cis-penitentiary  degree,  enough,  that  is,  to 
keep  them  out  of  the  State's  Prison.  But  in  politics 
they  make  no  scruple  to  lie,  to  bear  false  witness,  to 
forge,  to  obtain  votes  under  false  pretences.  If  suc 
cessful,  they  enjoy  a  four  years'  quiet  to  plunder 
and  to  be  forgotten  in.  At  the  end  of  that  time, 
the  people  are  ready  to  be  swindled  and  they  to 
swindle  again. 

The  Whig  managers  have  now  fairly  gone  over 
to  the  South  and  the  party  has  instinctively  followed. 
We  have  gained  a  great  victory,  say  the  Managers, 
but  over  whom  or  for  what,  the  Party  has  as  little 
idea  as  the  boy  Peterkin  in  Southey's  ballad ;  over 
the  principles  they  have  professed  for  the  last  ten 
years,  we  should  be  inclined  to  say.  The  child  who 
goes  for  the  first  time  to  the  wharf  and  sees  the 


C  62  3 

troop  of  urchins  busy  with  their  sticks  at  the  bungs 
of  the  molasses-hogsheads,  says  to  himself  —  why, 
this  is  stealing  !  But  presently  the  impulse  of  gre- 
gariousness  seizes  him.  The  sin,  dissipated  among 
so  many  blithesome  perpetrators,  loses  its  intensity 
and  sharpness  of  outline.  Divided  among  so  many, 
it  becomes  infinitesimal.  Presently  he  takes  a  small 
stick  and,  by  and  by,  as  long  a  one  as  he  can  get, 
and  is  as  busy  as  the  rest.  Still,  he  reserves  to  him 
self  a  conscience,  and  regards  as  disreputable  petty 
larcenors  those  who  transfer  their  luscious  booty  to 
a  kettle.  These  are  the  abstruser  distinctions  of 
ethics.  The  Whigs  saw  the  Democrats  enjoying  the 
plunder  won  by  base  compliances  with  slavery.  At 
first  they  only  remarked  the  compliance,  but,  ceas 
ing  gradually  to  be  shocked  at  what  they  habitually 
witnessed,  they  at  last  beheld  nothing  but  the  plun 
der. 

So  far,  then,  from  expecting  any  Anti-slavery 
measures  from  the  Whig  Party,  we  shall  be  sur 
prised  if  their  movement  be  not  henceforth  decid 
edly  retrograde.  They  have  taken  the  costly  first 
step.  They  have  already  undergone  that  initial 
slump  in  the  mire,  after  which  one  is  careless  about 
picking  his  steps.  The  fact  that  General  Taylor 
has  summoned  to  his  cabinet  as  prime  minister  a 
gentleman  who,  as  senator,  has  proposed  a  compro- 


C    63    ] 

mise  on  the  question  of  slavery  in  the  territories, 
indicates  the  future  policy  of  the  administration. 
It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  the  hope  of  govern 
ment  patronage,  and  the  desire  of  preserving  the  in 
tegrity  of  the  Party,  will  furnish  the  President  with 
a  compliant  House  of  Representatives. 

General  Taylor  has  all  along  professed  his  entire 
unfitness  for  the  office  to  which  he  has  been  pro 
moted,  and  his  unwillingness  to  ascend  the  danger 
ous  elevation  of  the  Presidency.  This  petty  affec 
tation  of  coyness  he  has  kept  up  even  on  his  way  to 
Washington.  It  is  like  the  nolo  episcopari  of  a 
bishop.  He  pointed  out  a  log  cabin  on  the  banks 
of  the  Ohio  and  informed  his  admiring  hearers  that 
he  would  rather  occupy  that  mansion  than  the  White 
House.  It  would  be  a  matter  of  economy  in  Con 
gress  to  make  an  appropriation  for  building  him 
such  a  dwelling  at  Washington.  We  confess  that 
this  cant  of  the  General  has  not  tended  to  convince 
us  of  that  straightforward  sense  and  frankness  which 
have  been  so  liberally  attributed  to  him.  Our  public 
men  are  not  so  shy  of  the  Presidency  that  it  would 
have  been  difficult  to  find  another  candidate  if  the 
General  had  resolutely  resisted.  He  reversed  the 
Irishman's  bull,  and,  instead  of  being  forced  to  vol 
unteer,  volunteered  to  be  forced. 

No  augury  of  the  President's  future  conduct  can 


C    64    ] 

be  drawn  from  an  inspection  of  the  entrails  of  his 
inaugural  discourse.  It  has  the  merit  of  brevity,  a 
questionable  one,  after  all,  when  it  is  not  combined 
with  fulness  of  meaning.  Major  Bliss  can  express 
himself  with  distinctness,  witness  some  of  his  dis 
patches  to  the  War  Department.  The  Whigs  pro 
fess  to  see  in  the  address  a  reduction  of  the  golden 
age  of  the  Republic,  and  cry  with  one  accord  redeunt 
Saturnia  regnal  The  General  declares  that  he 
shall  be  governed  by  the  Constitution,  and,  where 
there  is  doubt,  that  he  shall  follow  the  interpreta 
tion  of  the  earlier  presidents,  particularly  Washing 
ton.  Where  these  guides  are  wanting  he  will  sub 
mit  himself  to  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court. 
Unsafe  pledges  these  in  the  matter  of  slavery.  The 
question  of  its  extension  had  not  arisen  in  Washing 
ton's  time,  and  a  majority  of  the  Supreme  Judges 
are  slaveholders.  As  to  the  General's  own  opin 
ions  on  the  subject,  we  can  only  judge  them  by  the 
fact  that  he  has  extended  the  institution  over  some 
thing  like  a  hundred  new  victims  since  he  became  a 
candidate  for  the  Presidency.  But  we  must  wait 
and  see.  An  Inaugural  Address  is  no  safe  criterion. 
We  have  no  doubt  that  the  speech  of  his  majesty 
King  Stork  on  ascending  the  throne  of  the  frogs 
was  as  liberal  and  as  full  of  respect  for  the  consti 
tution  as  that  of  his  predecessor  King  Log. 


MR.  CLAY  AS  AN  ABOLITION 
IST—SECOND  APPEARANCE  IN 
FIFTY  YEARS 


politics  have  presented  no  more  singu 
lar  phenomenon  than  the  popularity  of  Henry  Clay. 
As  Napoleon  seems  to  be  the  fashionable  nickname 
now,  one  being  the  Napoleon  of  Peace,  another  of 
Finance,  and  a  third  of  Magnetic  Telegraphing,  we 
may  call  him  the  Napoleon  of  Defeat.  He  has 
achieved  more  signal  unsuccesses  than  any  states 
man  in  the  country.  His  popularity  has  never 
struck  down  any  deep  root  into  the  heart  of  the 
people.  Old  Hickory,  who  put  a  great  deal  of 
straightforward  sense  into  very  crooked  spelling ; 
who  hanged  the  Bank  as  he  had  hanged  Ambrister 
in  Florida ;  who  bullied  France,  who  dragooned  South 
Carolina,  and  swore  by  the  Eternal  now  and  then, 
had  a  far  stronger  hold  upon  the  masses  because  he 
reflected  them  more  truly.  But  Clay  somehow  con 
jured  an  enthusiasm  into  merchants  and  cotton-spin 
ners.  He  found,  and  had  a  way  to  set  on  fire  the 
hearts  of  Banks  and  Brokers'  Boards.  Though  a 
VOL.  n. 


C  66  3 

slaveholder,  uttering  sentiments  which  would  have 
authorized  his  own  chattels  to  cut  his  throat,  he  was 
the  idol  of  those  whose  enthusiasm  for  freedom  is 
multiplied  by  the  square  of  the  distance  at  which 
the  struggle  for  it  takes  place.  Though  not  im 
maculate  in  private  character,  he  attracted  to  himself 
the  support  of  the  religious  classes.  Bible,  Tract, 
Missionary,  and  Magdalen  Societies  were  well-nigh 
unanimous  for  him.  Washington  was  the  Jerusalem 
and  he  the  Godfrey  of  a  new  Crusade.  Was  not  all 
this  because  he  was  the  genius  of  Compromises,  of 
middle  courses,  of  blowing  neither  hot  nor  cold, 
in  short,  of  the  American  System  ?  Whatever  the 
cause,  the  loyalty  to  him  has  no  parallel  except  in 
the  history  of  the  House  of  Stuart.  In  this  view  it 
becomes  poetical.  As  a  forlorn  hope,  as  a  devotion 
to  disinterested  defeat,  it  has  gained,  here  and  there, 
a  recruit  from  a  different  order  of  minds.  Whittier 
addressed  to  him  the  most  poetical  of  modern  polit 
ical  verses.  And  even  now,  as  Hogg  wrote  Jacob 
ite  songs  after  the  last  of  the  Stuarts  had  for  years 
been  laid  in  his  mockery  tomb  at  Rome,  Greeley  turns 
sadly  away  from  the  solid  Rough  and  Ready  pud 
ding,  to  sup  full  of  the  east  wind  of  long  ago  hope 
less  hopes,  and  to  compose  cold  water  dithyrambics 
to  the  patriarch  sitting  over  his  wine  at  the  St. 
Charles  Hotel. 


C    67    ] 

The  Whigs  have  at  last  grown  weary  of  the  at 
tempt  to  make  bricks  without  straw  out  of  their  .Clay. 
The  wreck  of  the  great  Western  politician  lies,  a 
weather-beaten  beacon,  upon  the  shoals  of  Compro 
mise.  Ships  of  larger  rate  and  stouter  timbers  are 
thumping  there  which  might  be  got  off  by  backing 
the  sails  and  throwing  overboard  a  little  constitu 
tional  ballast,  which,  among  other  disadvantages, 
has  the  prime  one  of  shifting. 

Mr.  Clay  has  been  the  most  unpolitic  of  politi 
cians.  He  has  made,  at  best,  only  coasting  voyages, 
hugging  the  shore  closely  all  the  while.  He  has 
never  struck  out  into  the  open  deep  of  great  princi 
ple,  for  his  navigation  is  not  by  compass  or  by  the 
eternal  stars,  but  like  that  of  other  fishermen  who 
venture  in  their  own  private  dories,  by  certain  land 
marks  on  the  shore,  such,  for  example,  as  the  White 
House.  A  fog  leaves  him  bewildered  with  a  pair  of 
arms  and  oars,  and  his  good  or  bad  luck,  as  it  may 
happen. 

Mr.  Clay  has  in  his  time  split  as  many  hairs  as 
another,  and,  as  Alexander  ordered  a  bushel  of  pease 
to  the  dexterous  pea-shooter,  the  Whig  Party,  in 
giving  their  will-o'-the-wisp  leader  the  mitten,  should 
have  been  careful  that  it  was  a  hair  one.  His 
philanthropy  embraced  all  races,  but  embraced  the 
African  with  a  difference  —  that  is,  with  a  handcuff. 


C  68  3 

He  was  a  republican  of  the  sternest  pattern,  but  who 
could  conceive  of  a  republican  blacking  his  own 
boots  ?  Indeed  we  think  it  would  be  hard  to  prove 
that  Cincinnatus,  the  favorite  sample  of  that  sort, 
ever  did  anything  of  the  kind.  He  was  willing  to 
allow  that  slavery  was  a  moral  and  political  evil  to 
both  master  and  slave,  but  were  not  his  chattels  fat 
and  sleek?  He  was  opposed  to  the  annexation  of 
Texas,  but  then,  —  he  was  in  favor  of  it.  He  was 
torn  by  conflicting  emotions.  Northwardly  he  was 
anti,  southwardly  he  was  pro.  He  was  opposed  to 
the  Mexican  War,  but  would  have  relished  slaugh 
tering  his  private  Mexican  in  a  humble  way.  On 
the  question  of  the  Wilmot  Proviso,  we  suppose  he 
would  be  against  the  extension  of  slavery  into  new 
territory,  but  would  be  in  favor  of  allowing  "  South 
ern  gentlemen  "  to  emigrate  thither  with  their  flocks 
and  herds.  In  reviewing  his  political  life,  what 
great  principle  do  we  find  that  he  was  ever  capable 
of  appreciating  ?  One,  and  only  one  —  that  Henry 
Clay  of  Kentucky  ought  to  be  the  next  President 
of  these  United  States.  But  unfortunately  he  has 
always  had  a  fancy  that  the  Presidential  Chair  was 
situated  somewhere  between  two  stools,  and  has  ac 
cordingly  several  times  seated  himself  with  an  un 
comfortable  rapidity  upon  the  floor.  This  mistake  in 
reckoning  the  locality  of  that  desired  object  has  mis- 


C    69    D 

led  others.  It  left  General  Cass  lately  with  his  heels 
in  the  air.  And  yet  General  Taylor  found  it  in  that 
very  position  and  succeeded  in  sitting  down  in  it. 

We  have  said  that  the  name  of  Mr.  Clay  comes  up 
to  the  mind  associated  with  the  advancement  of  no 
great  principle,  of  no  interest  that  has  bearings  more 
general  than  a  locality  or  a  class.  It  is  true  that  he 
was  an  advocate  of  Emancipation  in  Kentucky  half 
a  century  ago,  and  he  tells  in  his  recent  letter  that 
his  opinions  have  remained  unchanged  ever  since. 
That  fifty  years  have  wrought  no  advancement  or 
ripening  of  his  ideas  on  this  subject  does  not  tend 
to  raise  him  in  our  minds  as  a  statesman.  But  in 
truth  his  views  of  slavery  have  never  been  those  of 
a  statesman  nor  of  a  philanthropist.  Statesmanlike 
they  could  not  be,  for  they  were  limited  by  the  sup 
posed  interests  of  a  single  class  and  they  have  re 
ceived  no  forward  impulse  and  no  expansion  during 
the  period  of  more  than  an  entire  generation,  a  gen 
eration  which  has  accomplished  more  than  any  other 
in  the  propagation  of  social  and  humanitary  science. 
Truly  philanthropic  they  could  not  be,  for  they  were 
smothered  by  the  pressure  of  a  merely  physical 
majority. 

The  medical  history  of  the  human  mind  exhibits 
many  instances  of  sufficiently  ludicrous  hallucina 
tions.  Men  have  fancied  themselves  to  be  teapots, 


C    70    ] 

junk-bottles,  and  what  not.  Lord  Timothy  Dexter 
had  a  penchant  for  considering  himself  dead,  and  we 
have  known  those  who  took  it  for  granted  that  they 
were  alive  with  as  little  substantial  foundation  in 
fact.  But  we  have  never  met  with  any  vagary  of 
mental  assumption  more  preposterous  than  that  Mr. 
Clay  should  suppose  himself  an  Abolitionist. 

His  letter  reminds  one  of  Governor  Panza's  din 
ner  in  the  island  of  Barataria.  The  preparations 
for  the  meal  seem  satisfactory  enough  and  we  sit 
down  expecting  a  substantial  repast.  But,  one  by 
one,  the  dishes  are  whisked  away  from  us  and  we 
are  finally  left  to  make  such  an  arrangement  with 
our  importunate  appetites  as  the  assets  left  to  us  in 
the  shape  of  knife,  fork  and  napkins  will  admit  of. 

We  have  no  complaint  to  make  of  the  three  or 
four  introductory  paragraphs.  Mr.  Clay  treats  all 
the  nonsense  about  the  benefits  of  slavery  contempt 
uously  enough.  But  he  immediately  proceeds  to 
consider  the  question  with  sole  reference  to  the  pre 
sumed  advantage  of  the  white  race.  He  takes  the 
case  out  of  the  court  of  conscience  where  alone  it 
can  be  decided  absolutely  and  without  appeal,  and 
puts  it  at  the  mercy  of  the  never  ending  litigation 
of  political  economy.  If  there  be  no  moral  wrong 
in  the  robbery  of  one  half  of  the  community  by  the 
other  half,  the  problem  of  the  advantages  of  such  a 


i:  71  3 

system  would  meet  with  a  very  different  solution 
from  each  moiety  respectively.  But,  if  the  system 
be  wicked,  and  unprofitable  because  that  is  one 
necessary  condition  of  wickedness,  the  chances  of 
prolonged  debate  are  greatly  lessened. 

Even  after  taking  it  for  granted  that  Emancipa 
tion  is  for  the  interest  of  Kentucky,  Mr.  Clay  humbly 
concludes  by  saying  that  if  the  majority  decide 
against  him,  he  shall  submit.  The  majority  of  the 
people  of  the  United  States  has  several  times  de 
cided  against  Mr.  Clay  and  yet  he  has  shown  no 
bashful  reluctance  to  being  again  a  candidate. 
"  Pick  your  flint  and  try  again  "  was  his  motto  a 
few  years  ago.  Is  a  question  which  concerns  an  en 
tire  race  to  be  given  up  more  readily  than  the  shadow 
of  a  dream  of  a  chance  for  the  Presidency  ?  If  the 
majority  be  thus  absolute  in  deciding  what  things 
are  right  and  what  wrong,  what  office  would  insure 
the  throats  of  the  masters  in  any  state  where  the 
slaves  become  numerically  superior  ? 

The  truth  is  that  Mr.  Clay's  letter  is  disgraceful 
to  the  community  in  which  it  is  written.  We  admit 
that  deliberation  should  characterize  the  movements 
of  states,  and  such  deliberation  will  necessarily, 
without  any  precaution  of  ours,  characterize  the 
movement  of  large  masses  of  men  living  under  a 
long  established  social  system,  providing  they  are 


C  v2  n 

begun  early  enough  and  are  made  in  accordance 
with  the  spirit  of  the  age.  For  example,  if  the  slaves 
of  Kentucky  were  liberated  to-morrow  and  relieved 
from  every  political  disability,  the  question  of  their 
position  in  the  social  order  would  settle  itself  by 
the  slow  and  gradual  operation  of  natural  causes.  A 
social  wrong,  based  originally  upon  brute  force  and 
perpetuated  by  it,  may  be  reached  and  remedied  by 
legislation,  and  the  sooner  the  better.  Why  wait 
for  the  rust  to  eat  handcuffs  asunder,  when  there  is 
a  key  ready  to  unlock  them  ?  We  concede  to  Mr. 
Clay  that  deliberation  should  characterize  statesmen 
no  less  than  states.  The  rudder  which  determines 
the  direction  of  the  intellectual  or  ethical  advance 
ment  of  any  age  may  be  behind  it,  as  in  a  vessel, 
but  the  steersman  at  the  wheel  in  front,  and  with  a 
clear  outlook  forward.  Mr.  Clay's  notion  of  the 
duty  of  the  man  at  the  helm  seems  to  be  that  he 
should  be  keeping  his  balance  astride  of  an  empty 
cask  out  of  sight  in  the  rear  of  the  ship. 

We  shall  not  trouble  ourselves  with  an  analysis  of 
a  document  which  all  our  readers  will  probably  read 
for  themselves.  The  spirit  of  barbarism  which  dis 
tinguishes  it  would  alone  be  a  sufficient  argument 
in  condemnation  of  a  system  which  could  so  blunt 
the  sensibilities  of  an  originally  fine  nature  and  ob 
scure  the  perceptions  of  a  keen  and  quick  intellect. 


C    73    ] 

The  Letter  is  valuable  chiefly  as  a  curiosity  and 
as  a  sign  of  the  times.  It  is  the  unwilling  creaking 
of  a  rusty  political  weather-cock  which  begins  to 
feel  the  first  indications  of  wind  from  a  new  quarter. 
One  thing  is  very  certain.  It  is  not  of  such  mate 
rial  that  reforms  are  made.  Here  is  compromise  out- 
compromised,  and  terms  offered  to  the  Devil  such 
as  he  would  not  have  dared  to  ask.  Here  is  wrong 
to  be  treated  on  the  principle  of  similia  similibus 
curantur,  but  with  no  homoeopathic  dose.  The  poor 
slave,  if  he  escape  being  sold  out  of  the  state,  and 
if  he  survive  the  thirty-nine  years'  administration  of 
hairs  of  the  dog  that  bit  them  prescribed  by  Mr. 
Clay,  is  to  be  transported  to  a  fever  manufactory  at 
his  own  expense. 

A  man  is  drowning  and  Dr.  Clay  is  called  in. 
The  following  is  his  prescription,  —  "  Take  of 
water  (if  distilled  the  better)  enough  to  submerge 
the  patient.  Keep  him  carefully  sunk  therein 
thirty-nine  hours,  or  more  in  proportion  to  the 
length  of  time  he  has  already  been  under  water. 
Then  raise  him  carefully,  attach  a  fifty-six  pound 
weight  to  each  ankle,  transport  him  to  the  middle 
of  the  Atlantic  Ocean  (at  his  own  expense),  and 
then  drop  him  overboard.  I  think  he  will  never 
be  liable  to  a  recurrence  of  the  complaint.'9 


SLAVEHOLDING    TERRITORIES 

JL  HE  German  poet  Schiller,  in  a  little  poem,  the 
humor  of  which  is  delightfully  interpenetrated  with 
graver  meaning,  has  imagined  a  new  division  of  the 
earth.  Let  us  suppose  such  a  partition  to  be  once 
more  about  to  take  place.  A  claimant  comes  for 
ward  and  says,  "I  have  invented  and  brought  to 
perfection  the  great  doctrine  of  human  freedom. 
But,  in  order  that  freedom  may  be  fully  appreciated 
(such  is  the  weakness  of  human  nature),  a  strong 
contrast  is  necessary.  Our  light,  that  it  may  draw 
the  eyes  of  men,  must  have  a  background  of  dark 
ness.  Accordingly  I  have  appropriated  unto  myself 
the  bodies  and  souls  of  one  hundred  of  my  bre 
thren  after  the  manner  of  thy  servant  Abraham. 
These  toil  and  spin  for  me  to  the  end  that  I  may 
be  even  as  a  lily  of  the  field,  and  that  the  desire  of 
other  men  to  be  like  unto  me  may  be  increased. 
These  are  the  bushel  whereupon  the  divine  idea  of 
liberty  being  set  in  my  unworthy  person  (an  unde 
serving  candle)  may  give  light  to  the  whole  world. 


i:  7.5  3 

Without  this  system,  pride,  the  habit  of  command, 
the  aversion  from  labor,  and  other  virtuous  charac 
teristics  of  the  Christian  freeman  could  never  be 
brought  to  their  fullest  and  healthiest  activity  in  the 
naturally  wicked  heart  of  man.  Now  the  earth  is 
like  a  nursing  mother  and  must  herself  be  fed  that 
she  may  give  sustenance  to  her  children.  But  it  is 
one  of  the  unfortunate  contingencies  of  my  system 
that  under  its  operation  she  soon  becomes  exhausted. 
Therefore  it  is  fitting  that  I  should  have  a  larger 
proportion  than  my  brethren,  lest  I  and  these  my 
menservants  and  maidservants  should  starve  upon 
the  soil  I  have  received  from  my  fathers  as  a  herit- 
age." 

The  answer  should  doubtless  be,  "  Who  art  thou 
that  I  should  be  mindful  of  thee?  Have  I  not 
given  the  earth  among  all  my  children  that  they 
should  use  it  as  not  abusing  it?  Which  of  you 
shall  say  he  is  a  first-born  son  that  his  portion  may 
be  double  that  of  his  brother  ?  Behold,  I  have  made 
the  locust  and  the  caterpillar.  These  I  know,  and 
that  they  devour  every  green  thing,  making  no 
return  for  that  which  they  have  taken.  Man  also 
have  I  made,  but  not  as  the  locust  and  the  caterpil 
lar.  Art  thou  a  creeping  thing  that  thou  shouldst 
blacken  and  desolate,  or  is  it  a  good  thing  in  thee 
that  thou  shouldst  make  a  desert  where  the  garden 


C    76    3 

now  is?  And  what  pratest  thou  of  Abraham? 
He  also  was  good  in  his  season.  If  thou  seest  thy 
son,  being  a  boy,  tearing  off  the  wings  and  legs  of 
flies,  thou  excusest  him.  Not  so,  being  a  man. 
Neither  shall  the  world's  boyhood  be  for  an  example 
to  thee,  nor  shall  Abraham  stand  between  thee  and 
guiltiness  toward  thy  brother." 

We  have  stated  the  matter  in  this  form  simply 
because  it  brings  the  enormity  of  it  more  palpably 
before  the  mind.  This  was  precisely  the  demand 
which  slavery  made  in  regard  to  Texas,  and  obtained 
all  that  it  asked.  It  puts  forward  its  claim  again  as 
to  the  new  territory,  with  a  fair  prospect  of  getting 
half  of  it  allowed.  It  is  now  spinning  its  web  for 
the  larger  prey  of  Cuba. 

According  to  the  cosmogony  of  the  Singalese,  the 
earth  itself  was  originally  edible,  and,  without  suf 
fering  diminution,  afforded  sustenance  to  the  beings 
that  inhabited  it.  These,  at  first,  held  it  contentedly 
in  common,  but,  after  a  time,  the  fear  lest  this  mirac 
ulous  food  should  fail  them,  engendered  selfishness 
and  the  desire  of  private  property.  They  therefore 
parcelled  out  the  earth  among  them,  and  from  that 
day  it  lost  its  property  of  food.  Next,  a  kind  of 
grain  was  self -produced,  which,  without  labor  on  the 
part  of  men,  supplied  all  their  necessities.  This  again 
was  divided,  and  in  consequence  was  taken  away. 


C    77    ] 

Thus  by  degrees  the  earth  was  brought  to  its  present 
condition,  demanding  constant  toil  to  make  it  pro 
ductive. 

This  is  a  pretty  parable  of  the  common  right  to 
the  soil,  a  doctrine  the  number  of  whose  advocates 
is  increasing  every  day.  Some  sufficiently  conser 
vative  political  economists  have  given  their  assent 
to  it  as  an  original  principle,  the  gradual  reproduc 
tion  of  which  in  practice  will  remedy  many  of  the 
evils  of  our  present  civilization.  The  more  limited 
principle  that  the  title  to  the  soil  is  in  him  who  can 
most  profitably  use  it  is  gaining  a  more  general  ad 
mission.  Something  like  it  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the 
proposition  which  Sir  Robert  Peel  has  lately  brought 
forward  in  Parliament  for  bettering  the  condition  of 
Ireland,  a  scheme,  by  the  way,  advocated  several 
years  ago  by  Mr.  Richard  D.  Webb  of  Dublin. 

Now,  is  it  not  wonderful  that,  with  the  experience 
of  the  Old  World  before  our  eyes,  we  should  for  a 
moment  allow  it  to  be  a  Debatable  question,  whether 
slavery  should  be  permitted,  not  only  to  defile,  but 
to  blast  a  territory  whose  future  destinies  we  may 
shape  as  we  please  ?  It  is  the  merest  folly  to  talk 
of  it  as  a  constitutional  question.  The  Constitution 
has  sins  enough  to  answer  for  already.  That  which  V 
is  palpable  treason  against  God,  man,  and  the  nature 
of  things  cannot  be  a  question  at  all.  According  to 


C    78    3 

our  thinking,  radicalism  is  not  that  system  which, 
like  an  over-hasty  child,  is  continually  pulling  up 
its  plants  to  see  if  they  be  well  rooted,  but  that 
which  takes  good  heed  that  the  plant  be  originally 
well  set,  and  that  it  have  every  reasonable  chance  to 
grow  and  thrive  to  afford  fruit  and  shade  to  our 
sons'  sons. 

The  terror  which  in  the  mind  of  Richter's 
Schmelzle  finally  swallowed  up  all  the  rest,  was  lest 
some  chemist  (as  he  had  heard  of  the  invention  of 
such  a  process)  should  suddenly  extract  all  the  oxygen 
from  the  atmosphere  of  the  earth.  Slavery  does  liter 
ally  worse  than  this  in  the  territory  over  which  it  ex 
tends  itself.  Not  only  does  it  rob  the  moral  atmos 
phere  of  that  oxygen  which  is  necessary  to  the  lungs 
of  free  labor,  but  it  also  extracts  from  the  soil  itself 
those  nutritive  properties  which  render  it  capable  of 
supporting  life.  Suppose  the  inhabitants  of  one  of 
our  territories  should  apply  to  Congress  for  admis- 
sion  into  the  Union  as  a  State,  with  a  provision  in 
their  Constitution  binding  them  within  a  certain 
number  of  years  to  reduce  all  the  arable  land  within 
their  boundaries  to  the  condition  of  the  Desert  of 
Sahara.  Would  Congress  entertain  the  petition  for 
a  moment  ?  Yet  these  are  virtually  the  terms  upon 
which  a  slaveholding  territory  would  demand  to  be 
admitted.  It  is  mere  nonsense  to  say  that  the  people 


C    79    H 

of  a  territory  have  a  right  to  establish  whatever 
Constitution  they  please,  provided  it  do  not  infringe 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  Is  it,  then, 
a  greater  crime  to  violate  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  than  to  violate  the  Constitution  of  the 
Universe?  We  rather  think  that  some  of  our  pro 
found  Statesmen  who  have  got  the  President's  chair 
in  their  eyes  and  so  are  unable  to  see  that  it  is  mor 
ally  wrong  for  man  to  blast  and  embrute  God's  chil 
dren,  would  hesitate  before  they  acknowledged  the 
rightfulness  of  deliberately  blighting  and  laying 
waste  God's  earth. 


ANTI-SLAVERY  CRITICISM  UPON 
MR.    CLAY'S    LETTER 

J_T  has  not  surprised  us  that  Abolitionists  should 
be  found  fault  with  for  not  being  entirely  satisfied 
with  Mr.  Clay's  plan  for  emancipation  in  Kentucky. 
It  is  generally  expected  of  them  that  they  should  be 

"  Contented  wi'  little 
And  cantie  wi'  mair." 

Nay,  they  are  looked  upon  as  peculiarly  ungrateful 
and  impracticable  (that  is  the  favorite  term)  if  they 
do  not  devote  their  entire  energies  to  soliciting 
nothing,  and  express  a  thankfulness  amounting 
almost  to  rapture  when  they  get  it.  For  eighteen 
years  they  have  received  their  regular  allowance  of 
it,  have  thriven  and  grown  upon  it,  and  their  de 
mand  for  an  extra  spoonful  or  two  is  received  with 
as  much  amazement  as  Oliver  Twist's  petition  for 
more. 

That  the  Anti-slavery  criticism  of  Mr.  Clay's  letter 
should  be  blamed  for  severity  was  to  be  expected,  but 
we  confess  that  the  quarter  from  which  some  of  the 


C  81  3 

reproof  has  emanated  has  excited  our  amazement. 
Abolitionists  cried  out  against  the  scheme  of  the 
Kentucky  statesman  as  coldblooded,  and  as  leaving 
out  of  sight  altogether  the  rights  and  wants  of  the 
chief  party  to  the  act  of  emancipation.  But  the 
"  Tribune  "  defends  Mr.  Clay  on  the  ground  that  mod 
eration  is  the  best  policy  and  that  he  is  better  able 
to  judge  how  large  a  dose  of  freedom  the  Kentucky 
stomach  is  at  present  able  to  bear.  The  patient  is 
on  the  verge  of  delirium  tremens,  and  the  "  Tribune  " 
would  not  recommend  total  abstinence,  but  would 
think  it  wiser  for  him  to  mix  enough  spirits  with 
his  water  just  to  kill  the  insects. 

We  take  no  one  to  task  for  inconsistency  simply 
as  such.  It  depends  entirely  on  the  direction  which 
the  inconsistency  takes,  whether  it  be  glorious  or 
shameful.  It  is  certainly  no  disgrace  to  a  soldier  to 
be  able  to  run  swiftly.  It  is  even  a  desirable  accom 
plishment.  Swift-footed  is  Homer's  favorite  epithet 
for  Achilles.  Yet  in  a  battle  (such  are  the  prejudices 
of  education)  our  opinion  of  the  soldier's  merit  is 
entirely  determined  by  the  consideration  whether  he 
exercised  his  pedal  gift  toward  the  enemy's  lines 
or  away  from  them.  So,  when  an  inconsistency  takes 
a  backward  direction,  we  are  inclined  to  look  upon 
it  with  suspicion.  Mr.  Greeley's  enemies  have  been 
in  the  habit  of  charging  him  with  being  under  the 
VOL.  n. 


C  82  3 

exclusive  domination  of  the  sign  Capricorn,  being 
thereby  impelled  to  butt  violently  against  whatever 
is  constituted  and  established.  Nevertheless,  in  the 
matter  of  Slavery  we  think  we  find  indications  of 
the  influence  of  Cancer,  the  inspirer  of  retrogression. 
If  he  be  about  to  butt  also  against  the  Peculiar  In 
stitution,  he  runs  backward  so  far  to  get  a  start  that 
we  well-nigh  lose  sight  of  him  altogether.  We  speak 
of  Mr.  Greeley  by  name  because  he  is  identified  (and 
honorably  so)  with  the  "  Tribune  "  and  has  given  to 
that  paper  its  peculiar  character.  We  intend  no  vio 
lation  of  editorial  decorums,  nor  shall  we  forget  the 
efficient  service  Mr.  Greeley  has  rendered  to  the 
cause  of  Progress,  because  we  find  his  judgment  in 
some  respects  so  entirely  perverted.  The  Whig  seems 
now  and  then  to  slip  down  over  his  eyes. 

Before  alluding  to  matters  of  wider  bearing,  we 
wish  to  say  a  few  words  upon  a  point  of  more  exclu 
sively  individual  interest.  On  several  former  occa 
sions,  as  well  as  in  connection  with  Mr.  Clay's  letter, 
Mr.  Greeley  has  taken  the  opportunity  to  indulge  in 
contemptuous  expressions  toward  Garrison  and  those 
who  are  nicknamed  Garrisonians.  That  truly  illustri 
ous  name  needs  no  defence  and  no  eulogium  of  ours. 
It  may  be  safely  transmitted  to  the  guardianship 
of  the  Future.  But  that  Mr.  Greeley  should  charge 
Garrison  with  fanaticism  as  a  fault  has,  we  confess, 


C    83    ] 

been  a  matter  of  wonder  to  us.  Why,  God  sent  him 
into  the  world  with  that  special  mission  and  none 
other.  It  is  his  peculiar  glory  that  he  has  fulfilled 
it  so  entirely.  It  is  that  which  will  make  his  name  a 
part  of  our  American  history.  We  would  not  have 
all  men  fanatics,  but  let  us  be  devoutly  thankful  for 
as  many  of  that  kind  as  we  can  get.  They  are  by 
no  means  too  common  as  yet.  Let  us  remember  Dr. 
Johnson's  excellent  advice,  above  all  things  to  en 
deavor  to  clear  our  minds  of  cant.  And  there  is  no 
cant  more  foolish  or  more  common  than  theirs  who 
under  the  mask  of  discretion,  moderation,  statesman 
ship,  and  what  not,  would  fain  convict  of  fanaticism 
all  that  transcends  their  own  limits,  and  then  abolish 
it  as  dangerous  to  the  body  politic.  From  the  zoo 
phyte  upward  everything  is  ultra  to  something  else. 
And  oddly  enough  Mr.  Greeley  owes  his  success  to 
the  fact  that  the  element  of  ultraism  slightly  pre 
ponderates  in  his  composition.  Undoubtedly  the 
zoophyte  taxes  the  barnacle  with  a  rash  activity,  and 
considers  the  framework  of  society  endangered  by 
the  unsettled  notions  of  the  periwinkle.  The  friends 
of  every  class  of  Reform  in  America  owe  a  debt  to 
Garrison,  and  in  such  matters  there  should  be  no 
repudiation.  Especially  let  not  the  butt  end  of  the 
wedge  sneer  at  the  ultraism  of  the  entering  part. 
How  does  it  happen  that  only  abolitionists  are 


[    84    ] 

charged  with  wanting  moderation,  and  that  slave- 
holding  is  the  one  sin  that  is  to  be  treated  with 
tenderness  ?  Is  there  then  a  scale  of  meritoriousness 
in  crimes?  Mr.  Greeley  subscribed  five  hundred 
dollars  to  assist  insurrection  in  Ireland.  We  freely 
admit  that,  if  ever  rebellion  were  justifiable,  it  was  so 
in  that  case.  And  why  ?  Because  no  plan  of  relief 
was  sufficiently  radical,  and  because  all  of  them 
looked  to  the  interests  of  the  great  landholders 
rather  than  of  the  great  body  of  the  people  who 
were  chiefly  concerned.  But  let  us  apply  here  Mr. 
Greeley's  reasoning  in  regard  to  Kentucky.  Surely 
Lord  Clarendon  and  the  great  landholders  who  were 
on  the  spot  could  judge  better  than  anybody  else 
what  measures  were  most  judicious  and  most  likely 
to  have  a  salutary  effect.  If  what  the  law  makes  pro 
perty  be  property  in  Kentucky,  why  is  it  not  so  in  New 
York,  and  how  will  Mr.  Greeley  defend  his  anti-rent 
doctrines?  But  perhaps  a  man's  property  in  the 
bodies  and  souls  of  his  fellow  citizens  is  more  sacred 
and  indefeasible  than  his  title  to  the  soil. 

We  did  not  think  that  rebellion  was  the  best 
medicine  for  Ireland,  nor  should  we  recommend  a 
servile  war  as  a  cure  for  Kentucky.  The  cold-blood 
cure  is  not  to  our  fancy.  But  it  seems  to  us  that 
Mr.  Greeley  was  more  nearly  right  in  his  Irish  than 
in  his  Kentucky  prescription.  In  that  case,  at  least, 


C    85    3 

he  followed  the  diagnosis  of  his  heart.  We  humbly 
conceive  that,  when  justice  is  to  be  done,  some  por 
tion  of  consideration  and  even  of  redress  is  due  to 
the  injured  party.  The  very  same  arguments  are 
brought  against  the  Irishman  and  the  African.  He 
is  improvident,  he  is  lazy,  he  cannot  take  care  of 
himself,  he  is  creation's  natural  loafer.  In  short, 
there  is  a  wonderful  sameness  in  the  arguments  of 
oppression  all  the  world  over. 

It  is  said  that  the  Abolitionists,  while  they  are 
dissatisfied  with  the  plans  of  everybody  else,  offer 
no  plan  of  their  own.  This  is  not  to  be  complained 
of  in  them,  for  it  is  the  necessity  of  their  position. 
They  are  critics  and  not  constructives,  it  is  true,  but 
they  are  fulfilling  their  appointed  destiny.  Criticism 
must  precede  construction.  But,  if  ever  there  was 
a  case  where  criticism  is  the  one  thing  needful,  it  is 
in  regard  to  American  Slavery.  Here  is  a  case  where 
the  primary  laws  of  Nature  are  violated.  All  that  is 
necessary  is  that  this  violation  should  cease,  and  that 
Nature,  always  organizing,  always  constructive,  should 
be  left  free  to  work  a  cure.  A  limb  of  the  body 
politic  has  fallen  asleep.  Remove  the  unnatural 
pressure  and  the  blood  will  circulate  freely  again. 
The  Abolitionist  unquestionably  is  a  bore.  So  was 
the  old  Eoman  with  his  Delenda  est  Carthago,  his 
old-fashioned  protective  tariff.  But  he  carried  his 


C    86    ] 

point,  and  so  will  the  Abolitionist.  It  is  true  that 
the  Abolitionist  plan  does  not  please  the  slaveholder. 
Neither  does  the  associative  plan  carry  instant  con 
viction  to  the  minds  of  the  civilizees.  But  that  is  no 
argument  against  either  of  them. 

We  ask  again  what  claim  the  slaveholder  has  to 
peculiar  tenderness  of  treatment  ?  Is  the  holding  of 
slaves  more  innocent  than  the  holding  of  locofoco 
opinions  ?  Mr.  Greeley  can  find  it  in  his  heart  to 
denounce  that  offence.  Will  denunciation  convince 
the  one  and  only  exasperate  the  other  ?  We  agree 
with  Mr.  Greeley  that  society  needs  a  radical  reor 
ganization.  Perhaps  he  thinks  that  Slavery  is  one  of 
those  natural  conditions  in  the  progress  of  society 
which  natural  progress  will  remove  without  inter 
vention  of  ours.  If  society  must  go  through  all 
these  natural  stages  before  it  reaches  that  point  of 
disorganization  where  reorganization  will  be  for  the 
first  time  possible,  why  oppose  the  introduction  of 
slavery  into  the  new  territory  ?  It  cannot  survive  its 
dissolution  in  older  states.  The  plan  of  the  Aboli 
tionist,  if  it  do  not  look  to  natural  laws  for  the  ex 
tinction  of  the  evil,  is  willing  to  trust  to  them  for 
the  safety  of  society  whenever  its  extinction  can  be 
brought  about.  All  that  it  asks  is  that  these  natural 
laws  shall  be  disentangled  from  the  snarl  of  an  odi 
ous  and  fatal  discord. 


C    87    ] 

But,  while  Mr.  Greeley  seems  to  deny,  at  least  by 
implication,  that  the  occasion  for  anti-slavery  action 
has  yet  arrived,  he  also  impliedly  admits  that  the 
golden  moment  of  opportunity  is  numbered  some 
where  upon  the  dial  of  time.  In  noticing  some  Vir 
ginian  comments  upon  the  letter  of  the  "  Tribune's  " 
Fairfax  correspondent,  Mr.  Greeley  says  that  "  he 
(the  correspondent)  is  not  disposed  to  act  against 
Slavery  till  the  proper  time  comes."  We  quote  from 
memory,  but  with  enough  exactness,  we  believe,  to 
be  guilty  of  no  misrepresentation.  Now,  who  is  to 
set  the  alarm  of  the  clock  at  the  fitting  hour  ?  Mr. 
Greeley  was  willing  to  take  the  word  of  Paddy  as  to 
Ireland,  will  he  consult  Pomp  as  to  Virginia?  Or 
must  we  leave  it  to  Pomp's  master?  Those  who 
profit  by  any  abuse  are  not  apt  to  be  in  any  particular 
hurry  about  reform.  Let  us  remember  that  stanza 
of  good  Dr.  Watts  which  we  learned  when  we  were 
children,  — 

"  'T  is  the  voice  of  the  sluggard  ! 
I  hear  him  complain  : 

You  have  called  me  too  soon  ! 
Let  me  slumber  again." 

We  rather  think  this  would  be  the  answer  Mr.  Greeley 
would  receive  from  the  slaveholder  when,  satisfied 
that  the  "  proper  time  has  come,"  he  comes  forward 
to  shake  him  by  the  shoulder  and  arouse  him  to  the 


C  88  3 

exigencies  of  the  occasion.  The  sauce  to  which  the 
Garrison  has  been  treated  would  be  liberally  dis-  • 
pensed  to  the  Greeley  also,  or  there  is  not  so  much 
human  nature  in  man  as  is  generally  suspected.  But 
then  Mr.  Greeley  would  doubtless  have  a  plan.  This 
unquestionably  would  be  a  philosophical  mode  of 
proceeding,  but  how  are  we  to  be  sure  that  it  will 
suit  the  slaveholder  ?  We  are  tolerably  confident 
that  it  would  not.  The  slaveholder,  when  Mr.  Greeley 
would  politely  request  him  to  state  what  method 
would  be  most  consonant  to  his  feelings,  would  an 
swer,  as  did  the  "  impracticable  "  boy  whose  mother 
asked  him  what  he  would  like  for  breakfast,  "  Just 
what  you  ain't  gut !  " 

Mr.  Greeley  does  not  stop  to  enquire  whether  "  the 
proper  time  has  come  "  to  lament  prostitution  or  to 
rebuke  bitterly  the  causes  of  it.  He  can  denounce 
land-monopoly  and  wages-slavery.  Yet  all  these,  as 
well  as  African  slavery,  would  naturally  cease  to  exist 
were  society  once  reorganized  upon  a  scientific  basis. 
The  time  to  cry  out  against  any  popular  sin  has 
come  whenever  God  has  sent  a  message  to  that  effect 
to  any  ardent  and  fearless  soul.  It  is  only  Jonah 
who  turns  back,  and  it  is  he  also  who  gets  thrown 
overboard  for  his  pains.  If  Mr.  Greeley  cannot  unite 
the  Whig  and  the  Reformer  in  his  own  person,  it 
does  not  necessarily  follow  that  Abolitionism  is  the 


impracticable  element  which  prevents  fusion.  The 
Reformer  must  expect  comparative  isolation,  and  he 
must  be  strong  enough  to  bear  it.  He  cannot  look 
for  the  sympathy  and  cooperation  of  popular  majori 
ties.  Yet  these  are  the  tools  of  the  politician.  A 
man  can  be  a  politician,  and  at  the  same  time  a  re 
former  to  a  certain  extent.  He  cannot  be  wholly 
both,  but  he  has  his  choice  which  he  will  cleave  to 
and  which  he  will  cast  from  him.  It  is  for  him  to 
judge  whether  of  the  two  be  the  most  valuable. 

All  true  Reformers  are  incendiaries.  But  it  is  the 
hearts,  brains,  and  souls  of  their  fellow-men  which 
they  set  on  fire,  and  in  so  doing  they  perform  the 
function  appropriated  to  them  in  the  wise  order  of 
Providence. 


PUBLIC    OPINION 

"  It  is  remarkable  that  the  two  greatest  and  most  salutary  social  revo 
lutions  which  have  taken  place  in  England  —  that  revolution  which  in  the 
thirteenth  century  put  an  end  to  the  tyranny  of  nation  over  nation,  and 
that  revolution  which  a  few  generations  later  put  an  end  to  the  property  of 
man  in  man  —  were  silently  and  imperceptibly  effected.  They  struck  eon- 
temporary  observers  with  no  surprise,  and  have  received  from  historians  a 
very  scanty  measure  [sic  !]  of  attention.  They  were  brought  about  neither 
by  legislative  regulation  nor  by  physical  force.  Moral  causes  noiselessly 
effaced,  first  the  distinction  between  Norman  and  Saxon,  and  then  the 
distinction  between  master  and  slave.  None  can  venture  to  fix  the  precise 
moment  at  which  either  distinction  ceased.  Some  faint  traces  of  the  old 
Norman  feeling  might  perhaps  have  been  found  late  in  the  fourteenth  cen 
tury.  Some  faint  traces  of  the  institution  of  villeinage  were  detected  by 
the  curious  so  late  as  the  days  of  the  Stuarts;  nor  has  that  institution 
ever,  to  this  hour,  been  abolished  by  statute  !  "  —  MACAULAY'S  History  of 
England. 


the  "  Standard  "  of  April  19th  an  article  was 
copied  from  the  Louisville  (Kentucky)  "Journal,"  in 
which  the  foregoing  extract  from  Macaulay's  history 
is  taken  for  a  text,  and  the  conclusion  drawn  from  it 
that  Slavery  in  Kentucky  were  better  left  to  itself 
to  perish  by  natural  causes.  Now,  though  we  are 
no  friends  to  the  material  gallows,  we  do  not  think 
that  society  has  yet  reached  a  stage  where  the  moral 
gibbet  may  safely  be  dispensed  with.  Great  offend- 


C    91    3 

ers  against  humanity  must  be  hung  up,  as  hawks 
are  nailed  upon  barn  doors,  for  an  example  and  warn 
ing  to  their  predaceous  fellows.  The  newspaper  is 
the  modern  pillory  and  the  amount  of  mud  and  the 
quality  of  the  eggs  are  matters  of  editorial  taste. 
The  nineteenth  century  has  shown  nothing  stronger 
or  more  instructive  than  a  French  Emperor,  the 
emulator  of  Charlemagne,  suing  an  English  editor 
for  libel.  The  great  statutes  of  humanity  get  passed 
silently  and  suddenly.  Sometimes  it  is  only  a  poet 
or  two  who  compose  the  parliament.  Hood  held  two 
short  sessions  and  laid  the  seducer  and  the  needle 
woman's  employer  under  pains  and  penalties  unheard 
of  before.  In  such  cases  the  criminal  pleads  in 
vain  that  he  has  done  but  what  his  fathers  did  before 
him  without  hindrance,  and  that  he  was  ignorant  of 
the  law.  Eob  Koy's  son  without  avail  claims  an 
cestral  prescription  against  hemp,  and  is  brought  to 
the  woodie  in  extreme  bewilderment,  and  amid  much 
lamentation  from  the  lovers  of  border  romance.  Sic 
itur  ad  astra  is  the  moral  of  Plutarch,  but  we  want 
not  only  finger-posts  for  the  starry  road,  but  warn 
ing-boards  to  tell  us  what  ways  are  unsafe.  The  in 
vention  of  the  newspaper  has  supplied  the  Jonathan 
Wilds  of  the  world  with  their  unwished-f  or  Plutarch 
also,  who  closes  every  column  with  a  surly  sic  itur 
ad  patibulwn. 


C  93  3 

History,  it  was  long  ago  said,  is  philosophy  teach 
ing  by  example,  but  it  is  only  those  who  have  some 
touch  of  philosophy  in  themselves  who  make  apt 
scholars  in  that  High  School.  With  most  of  us  even 
the  a-b  ab's  have  to  be  feruled  in,  lessons  in  one 
syllable  demand  personal  applications  of  the  historic 
birch,  and  a  fresh  breeching  must  go  with  every 
added  syllable  to  make  it  stick.  After  all,  Common 
Sense  is  as  good  a  teacher  as  any.  Every  fresh  gen 
eration,  like  every  fresh  little  boy,  must  be  put  to 
school  to  its  own  experience.  No  histories  of  former 
Tommies  will  avail  to  keep  the  new  Tommy's  fingers 
out  of  the  fire,  a  piece  of  wisdom  which  a  live  coal 
will  ineffaceably  inculcate  in  a  second. 

Yet  it  is  in  such  minor  and  personal  prudences 
only  that  History  is  good  for  anything  as  an  in 
structor.  Human  nature  undoubtedly  remains  un 
changed  from  age  to  age.  But  it  is  very  question 
able  whether  the  height  and  the  depth  of  it  have 
ever  been  wholly  revealed  in  the  conduct  of  affairs. 
We  are  speaking  of  human  nature  as  it  has  been  illus 
trated  by  nations  and  societies  of  men,  not  by  the 
individual.  In  this  respect  it  has  been  constantly 
working  itself  through  a  process  of  development  and 
disentanglement.  The  average  has  been  rising  from 
generation  to  generation.  Accordingly  the  relation 
in  which  any  people  stands  to  history  can  never  find 


C    93    3 

an  exact  parallel  or  a  guiding  precedent  in  its  own 
failures  or  successes  at  a  different  epoch,  or  in  those 
of  another  people  whose  conduct  has  been  shaped 
and  whose  history  has  been  imperceptibly  deter 
mined  by  the  influence  of  social  and  religious  ideas 
clearly  intelligible  only  to  itself  and  upon  the  spot. 
For  example,  the  success  of  the  American  Revolu 
tion,  wrought  by  a  people  accustomed  to  self-gov 
ernment,  perplexed  by  no  social  problems,  and  scat 
tered  over  a  country  where  there  was  more  work  to 
be  done  than  hands  to  do  it  with,  could  afford  to  no 
thinking  man  a  base  whereon  to  erect  the  horoscope 
of  the  France  of  1845.  The  noble  Lamartine  has 
been  sniffed  at  as  a  very  French  Washington.  The 
absurdity  was  in  expecting  the  French  to  have  a 
Washington  at  all.  Washington,  the  heroic  flower 
of  Common  Sense,  was,  intellectually  and  physically, 
and  by  constitution  and  temperament,  ordained  to 
the  leadership  of  men  of  the  English  stock,  a  stock 
the  least  of  all  influenced  by  its  poets,  or  fitly  repre 
sented  by  them.  Lamartine  showed  himself  the  man 
for  the  occasion,  and  Washington  did  no  more.  In 
the  great  Frenchman's  case,  it  was  not  the  man,  but 
the  occasion  that  was  less  fortunate.  Another  in 
stance  is  offered  us  in  Hungary  and  Ireland.  The 
territorial  position  of  the  people  of  both  countries 
in  relation  to  the  central  government  is  very  similar. 


C    94    3 

Hungary  is  also,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  an 
island.  The  people  are  without  arms,  and  the  armies, 
the  discipline,  and  the  prestige  of  a  powerful  empire 
are  directed  against  them.  Yet  Ireland  will  not  fur 
nish  the  premises  for  a  logical  syllogism  in  regard 
to  Hungary.  In  short,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a 
syntax  of  History.  The  verb  signifying  to  reform 
will  require  one  case  in  one  people  or  generation 
and  another  in  a  different  one. 

To  come  back  now  more  immediately  to  our  text. 
And  let  us  say  in  advance  how  agreeable  it  is  to 
find  a  Southern  editor  who  is  willing  to  speak  tem 
perately  and  reasonably  on  the  subject  of  Slavery, 
who  is  desirous  of  drawing  philosophical  conclusions 
(however  unsuccessful  he  may  be),  and  who  is  able 
to  speak  of  Garrison,  not  as  a  monster,  but  as  a 
legitimate  product  of  the  order  of  Nature. 

Are  there,  then,  any  points  of  resemblance  be 
tween  the  causes  which  brought  about  the  abolition 
of  villeinage  in  England  and  those  which  are  in 
operation  against  slavery  in  America  ?  Without 
doubt  there  are,  but  they  lead  directly  to  conclu 
sions  which  would  not  be  particularly  palatable  to 
the  Kentucky  editor.  One  thing  is  tolerably  certain, 
that  the  son  of  Zachary  Macaulay  (however  unphilo- 
sophic  he  may  be  in  regard  to  Whig  principles  as 
a  panacea  for  all  the  social  diseases  of  England) 


C    95    H 

would  never  find  in  the  history  of  Saxon  enfran 
chisement  an  excuse  for  the  continuance  of  African 
bondage. 

Let  us  remember,  at  the  outset,  that,  although  the 
social  condition  of  Kentucky  may  find  a  parallel  (it 
self  no  very  encouraging  circumstance)  in  that  of 
England  in  the  13th  century,  the  comparison,  how 
ever  generally  true,  fails  in  particulars.  That  is  a 
sufficiently  loose  kind  of  reasoning  which  quietly 
leaves  six  centuries  out  of  the  question.  If  we  could 
have  supposed  villeinage  to  have  continued  in  a  par 
ticular  county  of  England,  after  the  progress  of 
ideas  had  indignantly  expelled  it  from  all  the  rest 
of  Christendom,  the  comparison  would  be  more  legit 
imate. 

The  only  safe  argument  that  can  be  drawn  from 
the  abolition  of  Slavery  in  England,  and  the  fact 
that  it  was  accomplished  silently  and  without  leav 
ing  any  scars,  would  tell  in  favor  of  the  Kentucky 
emancipationists  and  not  of  their  opponents.  If  his 
torical  precedents  are  to  be  admitted  at  all,  there 
should  be  an  exact  coincidence  in  all  particulars 
(external  and  internal)  between  the  ancient  case  and 
the  modern.  In  the  present  instance  the  precedent 
settles  one  thing  clearly,  that  slavery  must  be  abol 
ished  in  one  way  or  another.  The  question  is 
whether  the  same  natural  causes  are  at  work  in  both 


C    96    3 

cases.  If  not,  the  moral  of  the  three  wise  men  of 
Gotham  might  have  been  brought  against  Columbus 
with  unanswerable  force. 

One  great  "natural  cause"  was  wanting  then 
which  is  in  full  activity  now,  a  cause,  which,  by  les 
sening  the  chances  of  an  appeal  to  brute  force,  in 
creases  the  necessity  of  moral  agitation.  This  is  the 
newspaper.  Had  this  existed  in  England  during  the 
time  that  the  villein  was  struggling  upward  to  the 
ownership  of  himself,  we  should  find  traces  enough 
of  violent  fermentation.  In  truth  the  contest  was  a 
long  one  between  the  feudal  lord  and  his  serf,  and 
the  latter  finally  attained  not  his  natural  but  his 
legal  rights,  a  resource  from  which  the  Kentucky 
slave  is  wholly  excluded.  The  Southern  slave  has 
one  remedy  which  the  serf  also  frequently  relied  on, 
namely,  his  legs,  and  the  lawyers  at  last,  by  their 
construction  of  the  law,  made  recapture  so  expen 
sive,  harassing,  and  difficult  an  operation,  that  the 
lords  gave  up  all  attempts  at  it.  The  abolition  of 
villeinage  was  in  truth  the  fulcrum  on  which  origi 
nally  rested  that  great  lever  of  opinion  which  over 
turned  the  African  slave  trade  first,  and  then  West 
Indian  slavery.  The  famous  Somerset  case  was  de 
cided  in  accordance  with  English  precedents  of  the 
time  of  the  abolition  of  villeinage,  and  so  important 
and  close  was  the  bearing  of  those  precedents  upon 


C    97    3 

the  case  of  African  slavery  that  Granville  Sharp  wrote 
a  History  of  Villeinage  and  its  abolition,  that  the 
analogy  of  the  two  cases  might  influence  the  public 
mind. 


VOL.  n. 


MOBS 

JjJ_OBS  as  often  wear  velvet  as  fustian,  and  hard 
words  are  as  commonly  their  missiles  as  brickbats. 
Wherever  force  and  majorities  are  appealed  to  against 
reason  or  right,  there  is  a  mob,  whether  led  by  an 
anointed  king  or  an  unanointed  Bynders.  Anax- 
agoras  was  mobbed  by  pagan,  Galileo  by  Christian 
priests ;  Wordsworth  by  reviewers ;  the  Abolitionist 
first  by  the  populace,  and  since  by  editors.  An  in 
vading  army  is  only  a  mob  organized  and  put  into 
regimentals.  America,  France,  Austria,  and  England 
in  turn  mob  Mexico,  Kome,  Hungary,  and  India. 
So  clumsily  have  we  managed  matters  hitherto  ! 

It  is  curious  to  observe  who  and  what  have  been 
subjects  of  mob  law.  The  printing-press,  the  revolu 
tion  of  the  earth  round  the  sun,  the  circulation  of 
the  blood,  the  spinning-jenny.  Indignant  Marblehead 
made  a  kind  of  Stephen  of  the  Salem  lawyer  who 
first  displayed  to  them  the  ungraceful  succinctness 
of  the  spencer.  Mr.  Kaebuck,  opening  the  first  um 
brella  in  England,  was  pelted  with  something  harder 
than  raindrops.  Shakespeare  has  Cinna  threatened 


C    99    3 

with  tearing  in  pieces  for  his  bad  verses  —  a  terrible 
but  ineffectual  example.  Toward  the  close  of  the  last 
century,  the  London  mob  made  as  recognized  a  part 
of  every  day's  performance  as  the  Chorus  in  the 
Greek  tragedy.  They  seem  to  have  been  enthusiastic 
but  rude  practitioners  of  a  primitive  species  of  hy 
dropathy.  A  douche  under  the  pump,  a  plunge  in 
the  Tower-ditch,  and  applications  of  mud  in  various 
stages  of  dampness,  seem  to  have  made  up  the  sum 
of  their  simple  pharmacopoeia.  Their  range  of  prac 
tice  was  extensive,  from  the  king  to  the  pickpocket, 
inclusive.  A  criminal,  acquitted  by  the  ordinary 
courts,  had  still  to  pass  the  Rhadamanthine  tribunal 
of  the  mob.  A  ducking  or  a  pelting  formed  the 
colophon  to  the  daily  volume  of  nearly  every  public 
performer's  biography.  "  The  MOB  then  took  him 
and  proceeded  to,  etc. ; "  this  is  the  way  in  which 
the  "Annual  Register"  concludes  its  account  of  the 
appearance  of  most  actors  on  those  perilous  boards. 
A  deputation  of  periwig-makers  waits  upon  the  king 
to  desire  his  countenance  in  the  present  depressed 
state  of  their  trade.  His  majesty  gives  a  gracious 
answer,  and  the  consoled  artists  withdraw  with  our 
sincere  sympathy.  But  it  appears  that  two  or  three 
of  them  have  basely  compromised  their  principles  by 
wearing  their  natural  hair  !  These  the  fate  of  Absa 
lom  is  to  overtake.  Accordingly  the  MOB  at  once 


C  1003 

enters  as  retributive  justice,  seizes  the  renegades  in 
the  very  fact  of  trampling  on  their  principles,  and 
puts  them  upon  a  severe  course  of  ditchwater. 

But  of  all  the  mobs  of  which  we  ever  heard,  the 
late  one  in  New  York  was  the  most  causeless  in  its 
inception  and  the  most  melancholy  in  its  results. 
The  joke  of  a  king,  certainly  not  exceeding  either  in 
point  or  delicacy  the  average  of  royal  facetiae,  once 
brought  fire  and  sword  upon  France.  But  this  is  not 
so  strange  as  that  a  theatrical  criticism  in  the  Lon 
don  "  Examiner  "  should  have  occasioned  the  deaths 
of  twenty-one  persons  in  Broadway.  Are  we  to  have 
war  between  America  and  England  because  an  Eng 
lish  critic  does  not  happen  to  agree  with  the  Bowery 
"  b'hoys  "  in  his  estimate  of  Mr.  Forrest  ?  Are  Amer 
icans  to  be  prevented  from  hearing  Macready  because 
Englishmen  did  not  care  about  hearing  Forrest? 
We  might  apply  to  the  mob  the  words  of  the  strange 
lady  in  "  Christabel,"  - 

"  Vainly  thou  warrest, 
For  this  is  alone  in 
Thy  power  to  declare  : 
That  in  the  dim  Forrest 
Thou  heard'st  a  low  moaning." 

The  Forrest  was  "  dim  "  enough,  beyond  a  doubt ; 
but  the  moaning  would  have  been  in  better  taste 
and  more  innocent  if  it  had  been  lower. 


C  101  1 

It  has  been  judicially  decided  in  England  that  an 
actor  is  not  protected  by  the  usages  of  civilized  soci 
ety,  that  a  person  who  enters  a  play-house  gives  up 
his  gentlemanly  feeling  with  his  ticket  at  the  door, 
and  is  at  liberty  to  express  his  disapprobation  of  a 
performer  in  any  less  emphatic  way  than  tearing  the 
house  down.  We  have  always  thought  the  position 
of  an  unpopular  actor  peculiarly  hard, — a  single  man 
at  bay  before  a  whole  audience  and  subjected  to 
the  grossest  insults  and  indignities.  It  is  the  natu 
ral  impulse  of  right  feeling  to  take  sides  with  the 
weaker  party.  If  an  actor  be  dull,  the  benches  and 
boxes  will  tell  him  of  it  soon  enough  in  their  quiet 
way.  We  should  have  a  terribly  mauled  and  bat 
tered  community  if  all  dull  people  were  to  be  pelted. 
There  were  particular  reasons  why  Mr.  Macready 
should  be  sustained  and  protected.  We  leave  en 
tirely  out  of  the  question  the  fact  that  he  is  a  scholar 
and  an  artist,  and  that  he  bore  himself  with  singular 
forbearance  and  dignity  under  the  gross  insults  of 
Mr.  Forrest.  It  is  enough  that  he  was  a  stranger 
alone  in  a  strange  land.  The  question  was  not  merely 
one  between  two  actors.  If  it  had  been,  there  was 
no  reason  why  justice  should  not  be  done.  But  it 
was  more  :  it  was  a  matter  of  national  fairness  and 
courtesy. 

We  did  not  intend  to  enter  upon  a  controversy, 


which  every  reasonable  person  in  the  country  has 
already  decided  in  favor  of  Mr.  Macready.  We  in 
tended  to  show  that  the  Respectability  of  New  York 
had  only  itself  to  thank  for  the  late  dreadful  occur 
rences,  and  that  the  monster  set  at  work  fifteen  years 
ago  with  general  applause  to  put  down  the  Abolition 
ists  has  returned  to  plague  the  inventors.  The  dis 
graceful  riots  which  took  place  in  July,  1834,  were 
first  instigated  and  afterward  excused  by  some  of 
the  leading  journals  of  the  city.  After  the  first  riot 
(at  the  Chatham  Street  Chapel),  the  "  Courier  and 
Enquirer  "  published  the  following  paragraph  :  — 

"  Learning  that  there  is  to  be  another  meeting  at 
the  Chatham  Street  Chapel  to-night,  we  caution  the 
colored  people  of  this  city  against  attending  it.  No 
one  who  saw  the  temper  which  prevailed  last  night 
can  doubt  that  if  the  blacks  continue  to  allow  them 
selves  to  be  made  the  tools  of  a  few  blind  zealots, 
the  consequences  to  them  will  be  most  serious" 

A  few  days  after,  the  same  paper,  speaking  of  the 
Abolitionists,  says, — 

"  When  they  openly  and  publicly  promulgate 
doctrines  which  outrage  public  feeling,  they  have  no 
right  to  demand  protection  from  the  people  they 
thus  insult." 

"  On  the  whole,  we  trust  the  immediate  Aboli 
tionists  and  amalgamators  will  see  in  the  proceedings 


C  1Q3  3 

of  the  last  few  days  sufficient  proof  that  the  people 
of  New  York  have  determined  to  prevent  the  propa 
gation  amongst  them  of  their  wicked  and  absurd 
doctrines,  much  less  to  permit  the  practice  of  them. 
If  we  have  been  instrumental  in  producing  this 
desirable  state  of  public  feeling,  we  take  pride 
in  it." 

This  was  after  a  brutal  mob  had  had  its  own  way 
in  the  city  for  several  nights,  during  which  it  had 
entertained  itself  by  sacking  the  houses  of  those 
who  happened  to  be  obnoxious  to  it.  Nor  did  those 
journals  which  took  the  most  decidedly  the  part  of 
law  and  order  fail  to  attribute  the  chief  blame  in 
the  matter  to  the  Abolitionists.  Undoubtedly  the 
frogs  were  very  much  in  fault  because  the  boys 
stoned  them. 

The  other  day  we  saw  the  remarkable  phenomenon 
of  a  mob-captain  waiting  on  the  Mayor  and  offering 
him  favorable  terms  of  capitulation.  "  If  Macready 
performs  to-night/'  says  the  generous  Rynders,  con 
fident  in  his  superior  forces,  "  there  will  be  a  riot. 
But  we  will  let  you  off  if  you  will  close  the  Opera 
House.  Trust  yourself  confidently  to  the  magnani 
mous  forbearance  of  Tag,  Rag,  and  Bobtail." 

Now,  in  this  case  Rynders  only  made  a  logical 
deduction  from  the  premises  of  1834.  It  is  lawful 
and  praiseworthy  to  mob  unpopular  persons  and 


C 

things  :  Mr.  Macready  is  an  unpopular  person,  and 
the  Opera  House  an  unpopular  thing  ;  therefore  we 
may  mob  Mr.  Macready  and  burn  the  Opera  House. 
How  must  the  sensibilities  of  the  brave  Bynders 
have  been  lacerated  by  finding  the  Opera  House 
open  !  How  must  his  humanity  have  been  outraged 
by  finding  it  protected  !  Nevertheless  the  path  of 
duty  was  clear  enough.  The  obnoxious  edifice  must 
be  destroyed  in  tenderness  to  the  feelings  of  the 
people.  Accordingly  the  attack  was  made  under 
leaders  (perhaps)  who  had  their  military  education 
in  the  successful  campaigns  of  1834. 

An  investigation  into  the  causes  of  the  riot  is 
now  going  on  in  New  York,  and  we  hope  that  it 
will  be  extended  far  enough  back  in  point  of  time. 
It  would  be  a  pity  that  so  salutary  an  instance  should 
be  lost  of  the  evil  influence  of  a  press  which  encour 
ages  brutal  violence  in  the  lower  ten  thousand  by 
pandering  to  brutal  prejudice  in  the  upper.  The 
homely  old  proverb  says  that,  as  you  make  your 
bed,  so  you  must  lie  in  it.  If  you  educate  mobs  you 
must  expect  to  have  them,  and  make  up  your  mind 
to  consider  them  as  a  political  engine  not  always 
under  exact  control. 


THE  ROMAN  REPUBLIC 


T 


wo  years  ago  Pius  IXth  was  the  most  popular 
man  in  the  world.  Even  the  thrifty  descendants  of 
Puritan  ancestors  paid  their  quarter-dollars  for  a 
sight  of  his  portrait.  It  was  believed  that,  as  former 
great  pontiffs  had  extended  the  spiritual  dominion 
of  the  Papacy  by  the  arrogance  of  their  claims  and 
the  astuteness  of  their  priestly  Diplomacy,  so  he  was 
to  render  that  ill-gotten  ascendency  permanent  by 
the  policy  of  renunciation.  Like  the  tradesman  who 
threw  Fox's  promises  to  pay  into  the  fire,  he  seemed 
inclined  to  elevate  into  debts  of  honor  a  portion  of 
those  hereditary  dues  whose  liquidation  appeared 
otherwise  doubtful. 

His  career  was  watched  anxiously  by  all  Christen 
dom.  Particularly  nervous  was  that  large  class  of 
Protestants  who  continue  to  do  nothing  but  protest, 
though  the  day  has  long  since  gone  by  when  they 
should  have  begun  to  assert.  Their  sole  vocation 
had  been  to  expose  the  errors  and  denounce  the  en 
croachments  of  Popery.  As  long  as  the  Pope  pushed 
one  way  and  they  the  other,  they  were  sure  of  sup- 


C 

port,  but,  if  the  opposing  object  were  suddenly  with 
drawn,  what  was  to  hinder  their  falling  flat  upon 
their  faces  ?  Moreover,  if  the  Pope  of  Kome  were 
overthrown,  the  claims  of  Protestant  popelets  who 
domineer  in  single  parishes  might  be  too  closely 
scrutinized. 

In  spite  of  all  that  has  since  happened,  we  believe 
that  Pius  IXth  was  sincere  in  his  desire  for  reform. 
But  it  was  a  hard  thing  to  be  at  the  same  time 
a  Luther  and  a  Pope,  still  harder  to  weld  together 
spiritual  and  temporal  sovereignty.  Even  as  head  of 
the  Church  his  freedom  was  sufficiently  circum 
scribed,  but  as  temporal  prince  he  could  scarcely 
make  a  move  without  being  checked  by  the  wooden- 
est  pieces  on  the  chess-board  of  Europe.  He  found 
himself  a  compulsory  fellow-conspirator  with  every 
empty  head  that  wore  a  crown,  and  with  every  base 
heart  that  beat  under  royal  purple.  Italy  was  ready, 
and  needed  but  the  introduction  of  one  more  ele 
ment  —  a  great  leader  —  to  crystallize  into  a  distinct 
nationality.  It  is  not  likely  that  Pius  loved  to  see 
his  native  land  lying  like  a  pearl  beneath  the  sordid 
hooves  of  Austrian  swine,  but  the  papal  robes  en 
tangled  his  feet  and  denied  him  all  freedom  of  mo 
tion.  There  is  no  middle  ground  between  good  and 
evil.  The  first  backward  step  carries  us  across  the 
boundary  line.  This  step  Pius  has  taken.  He  who 


C  107  3 

might  have  shown  himself  to  be  holder  of  the  keys 
by  unlocking  a  glorious  future  to  united  and  re 
deemed  Italy,  chose  rather  to  prove  himself  the  repre 
sentative  of  Peter  by  a  too  hasty  appeal  to  the  sword. 

No  motive  of  piety  can  be  assigned  for  the  attempt 
to  reinstate  Pius  in  his  temporal  sovereignty.  It  is 
not  as  head  of  the  Church  that  Absolutism  feels 
any  interest  in  him,  but  simply  because  it  is  not  safe 
that  a  single  link  should  be  broken  out  of  that  in 
tolerable  chain  of  hereditary  privilege  which  binds 
the  nations  of  Europe  hand  and  foot.  A  rupture  in 
one  part  loosens  and  lightens  it  in  all.  Absolutism 
has  a  true  etymological  sense  of  the  word  Religion 
and  is  resolved  that  it  shall  not  depart  from  its  ori 
ginal  signification  of  a  binding  again. 

It  is  sad  and  strange  that  so  entire  an  apathy 
should  be  manifested  in  America  to  the  movement 
now  going  on  in  Europe,  a  movement  so  pregnant 
with  gigantic  results  that  even  the  Reformation  can 
hardly  be  called  the  prelude  to  it,  but  only  the  tun 
ing  of  the  instruments.  The  peoples  have  at  length 
begun  their  exodus  from  the  house  of  bondage. 
There  may  be  a  passage  through  the  Red  Sea,  and 
after  that  a  forty  years'  wandering  in  the  wilderness, 
but  we  believe  that  the  road  to  the  land  of  promise 
is  found.  There  are  everlasting  principles  working 
at  the  bottom  of  the  present  commotions.  Reform 


[  108  ] 

has  become  more  than  ever  terrible  to  the  selfish 
Maintainers  of  whatever  exists,  because  it  has  turned 
practical  in  its  radicalism.  It  will  no  longer  content 
itself  with  lopping  here  and  there  a  limb  from  the 
poisonous  upas,  but  will  grub  up  the  widespread 
root  from  which  new  suckers  continually  spring. 
Anarchy  and  atheism  were  the  mad-dog  epithets  with 
which  the  first  French  Revolution  was  hunted  down, 
but  it  is  found  needful  to  invent  the  yet  more  terri 
ble  bugbear  of  socialism  to  demoralize  the  last.  One 
would  think  that  the  editors  of  English  journals, 
from  whom  the  greater  part  of  our  own  take  their 
cue,  were  disciples  of  Burritt  from  the  horror  they 
express  at  armed  insurrection.  But  armed  suppres 
sion  is  quite  another  matter.  For  our  own  part, 
if  arms  are  to  be  used  at  all,  we  had  rather  see  them 
employed  to  obtain  rights  than  to  maintain  privi 
leges.  Not  glory,  not  conquest,  but  only  freedom 
has  ever  sanctified  the  sword. 

If  a  broken  statue  be  dug  up  in  the  garden  of  an 
Italian  nobleman,  the  event  shall  be  chronicled  in 
the  newspapers  of  the  whole  civilized  world.  But 
when  heroic  men  have  disinterred  from  the  gathered 
rubbish  of  ages  the  noble  image  of  a  Republic,  of 
a  Republic,  too,  whose  history  is  taught  us  before 
that  of  our  own  country,  it  must  be  buried  out  of 
sight  again  as  quickly  as  possible.  Even  the  absurd 


•cool  I  Y     \ 
JJ 

.^^? 


libel  that  the  Roman  triumvirate  had  sold  those 
works  of  art  which  alone  draw  foreigners  and  their 
gold  to  the  eternal  city,  caused  more  execration  a 
thousand-fold  than  that  the  liberty  of  a  nation  should 
be  trampled  to  death  by  the  army  of  a  man  who  has 
shown  himself  the  equal  of  Bourbons  in  treachery 
and  incapacity,  and  their  superior  only  in  this  — 
that  he  has  been  able  to  exorcise  the  unlaid  ghost  of 
a  great  name  by  rendering  it  contemptible.  So  much 
profounder  a  sentiment  is  our  dilettantism  than  our 
humanity. 

History  has  hitherto  been  not  so  truly  Philosophy 
as  Conservatism  teaching  by  example.  As  yet  the 
people  have  been  dumb,  and  the  historian  has  writ 
ten  in  the  interest  of  the  governing  or  conquering 
class.  Accordingly  the  cause  of  insurrections  and 
attempted  revolutions  has  been  sought  in  the  natural 
turbulence  of  the  mob,  in  the  inconstancy  of  the 
popular  mind,  anywhere,  indeed,  but  in  the  right 
place.  But  the  truth  is  that  the  people  are  always 
politically  consistent.  Theirs  is  the  consistency  of 
the  needle  in  its  loyalty  to  the  pole.  For,  where 
want  is,  there  will  desire  be  also,  the  strongest  mo 
tive  of  human  action.  It  is  all  one  whether  the  want 
be  of  bread,  of  a  free  activity,  or  of  recognition  as 
fellow-men.  Bring  into  conjunction  a  ruler  with  an 
empty  head  and  a  people  with  empty  stomachs,  and 


C  no  3 

you  have  the  sure  materials  of  popular  explosion. 
The  people  are  singularly  unexacting.  The  very 
least  modicum  of  concession  will  keep  them  quiet 
for  centuries.  For  theirs  is  always  the  largest  share 
of  loss  by  an  unsettled  state  of  things,  and  their 
gain  from  revolution  comes  slowly,  if  at  all.  It  is 
only  intolerable  grievances  that  can  force  those  ac 
customed  to  the  endurance  of  authority  to  attempt 
a  change.  Hitherto  no  populace  has  kicked  from 
waxing  fat. 

The  Roman  revolutionists  have  been  denounced 
as  a  bloodthirsty  rabble  who  coerced  the  orderly 
citizens  by  terror.  This  would  be  a  priori  an  ab 
surdity,  even  had  it  not  appeared  that  no  city  could 
be  so  vigorously  and  successfully  defended  except 
by  a  unanimous  people.  It  is  a  disgrace  to  America 
that  she  is  not  represented  at  Rome  by  a  man  with 
brain  enough  and  heart  enough  to  sympathize  with 
the  struggles  of  a  race  in  whom  fifteen  centuries  of 
bad  government  have  not  extinguished  the  memory 
of  a  glorious  past.  Bishop  Hughes  says  sneeringly 
that  the  Roman  Republic  has  been  recognized  only 
by  the  "  female  plenipotentiary  of  the  '  Tribune.' ' 
It  is  a  pity  that  America  could  not  be  always  as  ade 
quately  represented.  But  Miss  Fuller  has  not  merely 
contented  herself  with  the  comparatively  cheap  sym 
pathy  of  words,  though  even  brave  words  are  much 


C  i"  1 

if  spoken  at  the  right  time.  We  learn  from  private 
letters  that,  the  last  American  left  in  Rome,  she  was 
doing  duty  in  the  hospitals  as  a  nurse  for  the 
wounded,  thus  performing  also  her  mission  as  wo 
man.  Women  have  been  sainted  at  Rome  for  less, 
and  the  Bishop  is  welcome  to  his  sneer. 

We  cannot  too  often  repeat  that  it  is  slavery  which 
has  benumbed  the  heart  of  the  American  people. 
It  is  one  chain  which  binds  down  the  oppressed  of 
whatever  race  or  complexion  all  over  the  world.  As 
long  as  we  have  our  own  private  sham  to  maintain, 
we  are  co-partners  with  all  other  speculators  in  sham 
wherever  they  may  be.  Nicholas  and  Calhoun  are 
in  precisely  the  same  category.  We  cannot  encour 
age  resistance  against  the  one  without  stimulating 
it  also  against  the  other.  But  it  is  impossible  for  us 
to  be  allies  of  the  oppressed  and  the  oppressors  at 
the  same  time,  so  we  judiciously  present  our  com 
pliments  to  the  strongest. 


FOURTH  OF  JULY  IN 
CHARLESTON 


T 


HE  fourth  of  July  is  an  anniversary  which  well 
deserves  commemoration.  On  that  day  ideas  which 
had  hitherto  been  considered  as  the  waking  dreams 
of  scholars,  beautiful  inutilities  like  the  metallic  trees 
of  boy  chemists,  were  first  recognized  as  principles, 
and  embodied  in  the  political  creed  of  a  nation. 
Yet  even  these  ideas  were  not  practically  but  only 
theoretically  received.  This  was  one  of  those  rare 
occasions  when  a  whole  people,  inspired  by  the  re 
sentment  of  a  common  injury  and  the  sympathy  of 
a  common  struggle,  rose  for  a  moment  above  the 
plane  of  circumstances  into  that  of  the  ideal.  In 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  embodied  the 
youthful  aspiration  of  America.  What  Goethe  said 
of  the  individual  is  true  also  of  the  nation  —  that 
there  is  no  hope  for  it  when  it  has  ceased  to  rever 
ence  the  dreams  of  its  youth. 

In  view  of  the  course  which  events  have  since 
taken,  perhaps  we  ought  to  look  upon  the  Declara 
tion  rather  in  the  light  of  a  vow  made  during  peril 
of  shipwreck,  or  a  sick-bed  resolution  of  virtue. 


n  us  3 

"  When  the  devil  was  sick,  the  devil  a  monk  would  be ; 
When  the  devil  was  well,  the  devil  a  monk  was  he." 

But,  however  this  may  be,  it  will  be  worth  our  while 
to  see  how  the  Fourth  of  July  was  celebrated  in 
some  parts  of  our  Confederacy. 

It  could  hardly  be  expected  that  South  Carolina 
would  permit  so  fine  an  opportunity  for  fustian  to 
pass  by  unimproved,  or  that  she  would  be  content 
with  any  ordinary  way  of  expressing  her  patriotism. 
Her  position  among  her  sister  states  is  somewhat 
like  that  of  Lord  Brougham  in  the  English  house  of 
peers.  No  one  denies  that  she  possesses  many  bril 
liant  qualities,  nor  questions  her  fatal  facility  in  ren 
dering  herself  ridiculous.  To  the  true  South  Caro 
linian,  Charleston  is  a  metropolis  to  which  the  rest 
of  the  world  stands  in  the  relation  of  a  dependent 
suburb.  The  view  which  such  a  city  takes  of  con 
temporaneous  history  is  accordingly  of  considerable 
(not  to  say  of  the  first)  importance. 

A  celebration  of  this  kind  would  of  course  be  in 
complete  without  an  oration.  In  the  present  instance 
we  have  not  only  an  oration,  but  one  pronounced  by 
no  less  a  personage  than  a  General.  This  in  itself 
may  be  considered  as  a  circumstance  of  some  sig 
nificance,  since  the  post  is  generally  conceded  to  a 
civilian,  and  affords  the  young  politician  an  oppor 
tunity  to  fly  the  American  eagle  for  the  first  time. 

VOL.   II. 


C    "4   3 

The  following  is  the  sketch  which  the  Charleston 
"  Mercury  "  gives  us  of  the  General's  discourse  :  — 

"  Looking  beneath  the  surface  of  historical  events  to  the  hid 
den  causes,  perceptible  only  to  the  eye  of  the  philosophical  reader 
of  history,  the  orator  traced  the  causes  of  the  American  Revolu 
tion  far  back  into  the  history  of  Europe,  and  proceeded  to  show 
the  successive  development  and  progress  of  the  Democratic  prin 
ciple  ;  the  various  modifications  to  which  it  has  been  subjected 
by  the  varying  circumstances  under  which  it  has  been  brought 
into  action ;  the  checks  and  safeguards  necessary  in  the  circum 
stances  or  character  of  a  people  to  prevent  its  excesses  ;  its  more 
recent  progress  in  Europe,  and  the  causes  which  have  produced 
the  tendency  there  exhibited  to  perversion  and  abuse ;  the  causes 
now  in  operation  and  daily  increasing  in  the  Northern  States  of 
this  Union,  destined  ultimately  to  prove  fatal  to  free  institutions  ; 
the  superior  adaptation  of  Southern  institutions  to  produce  and 
preserve  that  conservatism  absolutely  essential,  under  Repub 
lican  forms  of  Government,  to  well  regulated  liberty ;  the  grad 
ual  progress  and  present  threatening  aspect  of  the  slavery  ques 
tion,  and  the  utter  hopeless  and  universal  ruin  which  must 
overtake  the  South  if  it  be  not  arrested  ;  the  immeasurably  su 
perior  importance  of  the  preservation  of  our  institutions  to  the 
preservation  of  the  Union.  These,  and  other  positions,  the  orator 
illustrated  and  enforced  with  masterly  ability,  and  concluded  by 
an  eloquent  appeal  to  the  South  to  rally  in  defence  of  her  dear 
est  rights,  her  interests,  and  her  honor." 

We  do  not  know  how  far  back  in  the  history  of 
Europe  the  orator  traced  the  causes  of  the  Ameri 
can  Revolution,  but  it  seems  to  us  it  would  have 
been  more  philosophical  to  have  looked  for  its  origin 


C  "5  ] 

in  the  nature  of  man.  The  events  of  history  are  not 
causes  but  results,  and  those  of  modern  European 
history  are  the  results  of  a  movement  of  the  general 
mind  tending  steadily  in  one  direction.  If  the  Gen 
eral  has  looked  deep  enough  to  discover  that  the 
sacrifice  of  one  class  in  society  to  the  luxury  of  an 
other  has  ever  been  the  conservative  element  of  social 
organization,  his  philosophic  eye  must  have  pene 
trated  to  the  very  mud  at  the  bottom,  where  theory 
is  an  easier  process  than  accurate  investigation. 
The  great  landmarks  of  Christian  history  show  as 
distinctly  the  lines  which  indicate  the  successive  sub 
sidences  of  Privilege  as  the  surface  of  the  earth 
does  those  of  ancient  sea-levels.  No  system  of  gov 
ernment  can  be  secure  which  has  not  for  its  founda 
tion  the  satisfied  intelligence  of  the  governed.  Dark 
ness,  however  it  may  sometimes  be  called  solid  by 
the  poets,  is  not  the  safest  basis  of  political  institu 
tions.  A  crude  idea  of  Partnership,  becoming  ever 
more  and  more  distinct,  may  be  traced  through  all 
the  varying  phases  of  the  social  state.  Intellect  and 
personal  courage,  in  proportion  as  these  were  neces 
sary  in  the  ruder  ages  to  foster  and  defend  that  in 
dustry  to  which  all  communities  have  owed  their 
permanent  well-being,  were  allowed  to  draw  a  larger 
proportion  of  the  profits.  Hence  aristocracies,  whose 
lion's  share  was  not  disputed  as  long  as  they  con- 


tributed  their  share  of  mental  and  physical  capital 
to  the  common  stock.  But  as  the  average  of  the 
popular  intelligence  gradually  became  higher  and 
higher,  a  readjustment  of  the  terms  of  the  partner 
ship  became  necessary,  and  the  middle  class,  an  aris 
tocracy  of  wealth,  came  into  being.  More  recently, 
Labor,  which  no  longer  feels  the  need  of  protection, 
and  which  has  learned  that  it  creates  capital  but  is 
not  created  by  it,  has  begun  to  demand  a  new  set 
tlement,  in  which  its  claims  shall  be  duly  regarded. 
Our  Carolinian  orator  seems  unconscious  that  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  an  anachronism,  and  that  slavery 
is  an  eminent  one.  Men  talk  very  sagaciously  of 
this,  that,  and  the  other  thing  as  the  conservative 
element  of  society.  In  England  it  is  the  Church  or 
the  House  of  Lords,  in  America  generally  it  is  the 
Senate,  in  South  Carolina  it  is  Slavery.  But  this  is 
all  the  merest  gabble.  There  is  no  conservatism  for 
society  short  of  the  perfection  of  social  order.  One 
might  as  well  hope  to  put  out  Hecla  with  a  candle- 
extinguisher  as  to  repress  the  natural  aspirations  of 
man  toward  a  juster  and  more  perfect  organization 
of  society  by  any  such  temporary  makeshifts.  The 
only  conservatism  to  be  depended  upon  must  be  a 
system  as  harmonious  and  as  subject  to  eternal  prin 
ciples  as  that  of  the  planets.  All  that  will  be  ne 
cessary  will  be  to  allow  the  laws  of  social  gravitation 


C  117  ] 

to  act  unimpeded.  It  may  be  presumptuous  in  us 
to  argue  with  a  General,  but  we  would  suggest  to 
him  that  it  is  a  singular  conservative  principle  which 
itself  requires  to  be  conserved,  and  which  by  the 
operation  of  natural  and  irresistible  causes  is  brought 
every  year  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  point  of  explo 
sion.  That  is  an  expensive  species  of  industry,  and 
conservative  only  in  some  sense  hitherto  unrecog 
nized,  which  uses  up  territory,  instead  of  rendering 
it  more  productive,  and  whose  motive  power  is  the 
cart  whip.  We  are  afraid,  after  all,  that  the  most 
sensible  thing  uttered  at  the  Charleston  celebration 
was  the  following  toast  offered  by  a  Mr.  Clark,  — 

"  South  Carolina  and  her  institutions,  if  the  rest 
of  the  world  go  crazy." 

We  confess  our  sincere  belief  that  this  melancholy 
contingency  of  universal  bedlam  will  be  the  only  one 
in  which  the  institutions  referred  to  will  have  any 
chance  of  security.  If  the  rest  of  the  world  go 
crazy,  there  will  be  nothing  peculiar  about  South 
Carolina. 

It  is  certainly  a  singular  circumstance  that  the 
Fourth  of  July  should  be  selected  for  the  delivery 
of  an  oration  in  defence  of  slavery.  There  is  some 
thing  melancholy  in  it,  mingled  with  a  strong  sense 
of  the  ludicrous.  For  example,  "  Edwin  De  Leon, 
Esq.,  editor  of  the  '  Telegraph/  "  gives  the  following 


1 118  3 

toast,  — "  The  Southern  Address,  the  first  step 
toward  a  second  Declaration  of  Independence." 
Fancy  a  " second  Declaration"  beginning  "All  men 
are  not  born  free  and  equal "  !  Indeed,  so  great  is 
the  repugnance  felt  in  South  Carolina  toward  that 
famous  sentiment  of  initial  equality  that  we  should 
not  be  surprised  at  a  document  commencing  with 
the  assertion  that  some  men  are  not  born  at  all,  a 
theory  at  which  Mr.  Calhoun  more  than  hinted  in 
his  address,  a  production  which  came  as  near  not 
being  born  at  all  as  anything  we  ever  heard  of. 
One  other  toast  is  worth  quoting.  It  is  by  "  Dr. 
J.  H.  Morgan."  "  Resistance  to  aggressions  upon 
Southern  rights  by  the  whole  South  if  it  will ;  but 
by  South  Carolina  anyhow,  at  all  hazards,  and  to  the 
last  extremity."  This  in  a  city  which,  as  our  readers 
saw  last  week,  was  thrown  into  a  tremble  by  the  es 
cape  of  twenty  unarmed  negroes  from  the  workhouse ! 
Why,  if  the  protection  of  the  United  States  were 
withdrawn,  the  city  of  Charleston  might  be  bom 
barded  by  a  squadron  of  oyster-boats. 


MODERATION 

J_  HE  old  fable  of  the  bat  who  would  be  at  the  same 
time  both  bird  and  beast,  and  who  ended  by  being1 
neither,  is  unconsciously  illustrated  every  day  by 
very  excellent  persons.  They  flit  about  in  that  ves- 
pertinal  region  through  which  light  fades  by  imper 
ceptible  degrees  into  darkness,  gently  reprehending 
the  culpable  extremes  of  noontide  and  midnight. 
They  take  mediocrity  to  be  the  happy  mean  of  life, 
and  by  the  silent  example  of  their  twilight  virtue, 
convict  both  the  eagle  and  the  owl  of  an  unwise  ex 
cess.  We  do  not  accuse  persons  of  this  stamp  of  a 
conscious  hypocrisy :  we  will  only  say  that  they  mis 
take  prudence  for  philosophy  and  respectability  for 
virtue. 

We  wish  to  make  a  few  comments  upon  an  article 
by  Dr.  Peabody,  of  Boston,  in  the  July  number  of  the 
"  Christian  Examiner."  We  doubt  not  that  in  writ 
ing  it  he  was  actuated  by  sincere  motives,  and  we 
should  not  have  thought  it  worth  while  to  call  atten 
tion  to  it,  had  we  not  seen  it  noticed  as  a  model  of 
philosophical  reasoning.  We  admire  as  much  as  any 


C  12°  3 

one  can  that  profound  and  kindly  insight  which  can 
see  the  soul  of  goodness  in  things  evil,  but  we  think 
that  one  buys  equilibrium  of  mind  at  a  dear  rate 
when  he  is  fain  to  keep  the  balance  poised  by  seek 
ing  only  the  soul  of  evil  in  things  good  to  put  in  the 
other  scale. 

There  is  no  more  pernicious  cant  than  this  of 
moderation,  no  opiate  which  is  at  once  so  agreeable 
and  so  stupefying  to  the  conscience.  After  reading 
such  an  article  as  this  of  Dr.  Peabody's  we  are  in 
clined  to  ask  ourselves  Are  there  no  such  things, 
then,  as  positive  Eight  and  positive  Wrong  ?  and 
does  wisdom  occupy  a  middle  ground  between  the 
two?  It  does  not  touch  the  question  at  all  to  say 
that  there  are  slaveholders  who  are  pious,  benevo 
lent,  kind-hearted,  and  the  like.  Granting  that  there 
are,  it  is  clear  enough  that,  quoad  their  slavehold- 
ing,  they  are  none  of  these  things.  They  are  apt  to 
think  a  particular  course  of  conduct  wise  and  pru 
dent  in  proportion  as  it  is  convenient,  and  in  the 
present  condition  of  our  politics  and  religion  it  is 
exceedingly  convenient  to  sympathize  with  the 
wrongs  and  sufferings  of  the  two  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  slaveholders  at  the  expense  of  the  three 
million  slaves.  With  our  present  light  we  are  unable 
to  see  how  a  minister  of  Christ  can  make  out  the  mas 
ter  to  be  any  more  his  brother  than  the  bondman. 


C  121  j 

Dr.  Peabody  closes  one  of  his  paragraphs  with  a 
pretty  sort  of  antithesis  about "  a  philanthropy  which 
goes  far  enough  to  be  indignant,  but  which  will  not 
take  the  trouble  to  be  just."  But  are  not  indigna 
tion  and  justice  sometimes  at  one  ?  And  this  broad 
mantle  of  the  Doctor's  charity  which  he  stretches 
over  the  Slaveholder,  could  he  not  have  pieced  it  out 
so  that  it  would  have  covered  the  Abolitionist  also  ? 
Yes,  very  clearly,  it  is  hard  to  be  just.  If  Dr.  Pea- 
body  can  read  Theodore  D.  Weld's  "  Slavery  as  It 
is"  without  feeling  indignation,  the  boiling  point 
of  his  blood  must  be  at  a  vastly  higher  mark  than 
that  of  most.  When  he  will  show  us  a  reform  that 
has  been  carried  on  without  enthusiasm,  we  will  on 
our  part  do  the  hardest  thing  we  know  of  —  we  will 
find  an  article  on  the  Anti-slavery  movement  writ 
ten  by  a  Northern  clergyman,  the  staple  of  which  is 
not  a  conscious  or  unconscious  justification  of  the 
writer's  apathy  or  opposition.  God  makes  fanatics 
as  well  as  philosophers.  Every  man  has  his  particu 
lar  functions  to  perform,  and  is  more  or  less  of  a 
nuisance  until  he  has  found  out  what  he  can  do  and 
[has]  done  it.  We  see  no  good  that  can  come  of 
telling  people  that  fanatics  are  fanatical.  You  may 
drive  out  the  wasp  that  flies  in  at  your  study-win 
dow  a  hundred  times,  but  she  will  come  back  again 
prying  into  every  gimlet-hole  till  she  has  got  quit 


C    122    3 

of  the  last  egg  which  it  is  her  duty  to  lay.  We  pre 
sume  that  Dr.  Peabody  never  reads  the  Prophets 
to  his  congregation.  We  mean  no  disrespect  either 
to  him  or  his  profession  when  we  say  that  nature 
puts  something  more  (fire,  or  whatever  it  be)  into 
the  reformers  than  she  expends  in  the  composition  of 
her  Doctors  of  Divinity.  For  ourselves  we  can  toler 
ate  both  these  classes,  and  we  suggest  to  Dr.  Pea- 
body  that,  if  he  were  fitting  out  a  vessel  which  was 
meant  to  go,  he  would  not  rig  her  exclusively  with 
anchors  and  ballast.  He  would  reconcile  himself,  we 
fancy,  to  the  somewhat  violent  persuasion  of  canvas, 
or  even  to  the  fiercer  enthusiasm  of  steam. 

Against  Dr.  Peabody  we  will  quote  the  excellent 
Dr.  Jostin,  certainly  a  moderate  man  and  with 
nothing  of  the  zealot  in  him.  "  A  reformation," 
he  says,  "  is  seldom  carried  on  without  a  heat  and 
a  vehemence  which  borders  on  enthusiasm,  and,  as 
Cicero  has  observed  that  there  never  was  a  great 
man  sine  afflatu  divino,  so  in  times  of  religious  con 
tests,  there  seldom  was  a  man  very  zealous  for  lib 
erty,  civil  and  evangelical,  and  a  declared  and  active 
enemy  to  insolent  tyranny,  blind  superstition,  polit 
ical  godliness,  bigotry,  and  pious  fraud,  who  had  not 
a  fervency  of  zeal  which  led  him  on  some  occasions 
somewhat  beyond  the  bounds  of  temperate  reason." 
Now  Mr.  Peabody  is  not  unwilling  that  there  should 


C   123  H 

be  Anti-slavery  feeling  at  the  North,  and  a  judicious 
expression  of  it ;  all  that  he  desires  is  that  the  reform 
should  be  carried  on  so  as  to  exclude  the  reformers 
from  any  share  in  it.  He  even  undertakes  to  show 
that  those  who  express  themselves  most  strongly  feel 
the  least  interest  in  the  subject.  He  says,  as  Cole 
ridge  had  said  before  him,  that  men  speak  calmly 
when  they  are  most  deeply  interested.  But  he  lacks 
that  fitness  and  fervour  of  illustration  which  Cole 
ridge  brought  to  the  succour  of  his  theories.  Dr. 
Peabody  cites  to  us  the  example  of  a  merchant  who 
will  talk  violently  of  politics,  but  subsides  at  once  to 
plain  matter  of  fact  when  trade  is  introduced.  The 
only  difficulty  about  this  comparison  of  the  merchant 
with  the  reformer  is  that  there  is  not  even  the  ap 
pearance  of  parallelism.  Neither  politics  nor  trade 
appeals  to  the  highest  nature  of  man.  Ask  Garrison 
how  much  two  and  two  make  and  he  will  not  tell 
you  twenty,  ask  him  how  many  slaves  there  are  and 
he  will  not  multiply  the  real  number  by  a  thousand. 
But  tell  him  some  story  of  wrong  and  suffering,  and 
the  fervidness  of  his  nature  will  multiply  the  impres 
sion  of  it  a  thousandfold.  No,  Dr.  Peabody  cannot 
have  his  cake  and  eat  it,  any  more  than  the  rest  of 
us.  He  cannot  have  reformers  with  milk  and  water 
in  their  veins.  All  deacons  are  goody  says  the 
Yankee  proverb,  but  there 's  a  difference  in  deacons. 


c 

The  rule  which  governs  deacons  a  fortiori  includes 
the  humbler  orders  of  mankind.  "What  is  the 
reason/'  said  Gargantua,  "that  Friar  John  hath 
such  a  goodly  nose  ? "  "  Because/'  said  Grangou- 
sier,  "  that  God  would  have  it  so,  who  frameth  us 
in  such  form  and  to  such  end  as  is  most  agreeable 
to  his  divine  will,  even  as  a  potter  fashioneth  his 
vessels."  We  are  not  more  fond  of  violence  or  ex 
travagance  than  Dr.  Peabody,  but  we  endeavour 
to  reconcile  ourselves  to  the  operations  of  Provi 
dence,  tolerably  well  convinced  that  the  world  is  as 
well  peopled  in  the  average,  as  if  we  could  have  had 
the  pleasure  of  having  all  men  made  in  our  image. 

Dr.  Peabody  censures  the  fire  and  enthusiasm  of 
Douglass,  but  gently  and  with  an  evident  sympathy 
for  the  man.  It  is  his  associates,  he  thinks,  who 
have  corrupted  him.  We  have  a  suspicion  that  if 
Dr.  Peabody  had  seen  his  own  sister  whipped,  the 
King's  Chapel  on  the  next  Sunday  would  echo  with 
an  entirely  unwonted  kind  of  preaching.  It  is  evi 
dently  the  Garrisonians  that  he  has  no  bowels  for. 
He  indulges  in  a  sneer  at  them  (a  temperate  and 
judicious  kind  of  sneer)  as  "  gentlemen  of  ease  " 
who  make  speeches  in  Faneuil  Hall.  We  rather 
think  that  even  now  it  is  easier  to  preach  at  King's 
Chapel  than  to  make  Anti-slavery  speeches  in  Fan 
euil  Hall,  and  we  doubt  whether  Dr.  Peabody  would 
find  it  easy  to  make  one  of  Wendell  Phillips's 


c 

speeches  anywhere.  Must  Dr.  Peabody  live  in  a 
Broad-street  cellar  before  he  could  venture  to  speak 
of  poverty  in  Boston  without  being  silenced  as  a 
"  gentleman  of  ease  "  ?  It  is  not  easy,  God  knows 
it  is  hard  enough,  to  have  a  hope  and  a  faith  whose 
triumph  depends  on  the  conversion  of  many  mil 
lions  of  people  continually  backsliding,  continually 
taking  the  evil  for  the  good,  absorbed  in  the  world 
and  its  cares. 

However  Dr.  Peabody  may  understand  the  influ 
ence  of  the  Abolitionists,  it  is  very  clear  that  but 
for  them  he  would  never  have  written  such  an  article 
in  the  "  Examiner."  He  remains  at  anchor,  it  is  true, 
but  the  tide  has  turned,  and,  without  his  knowing  it, 
he  has  swung  round  to  the  length  of  his  hawser.  He 
is  subject  to  the  human  weakness  of  not  being  will 
ing  to  acknowledge  the  source  of  his  change  of  opin 
ion.  In  a  few  years  the  tide  will  set  strongly  enough 
to  make  him  drag  his  anchor  a  little  and  get  still 
farther  down  the  stream.  In  a  few  years  he  may  be 
willing  to  acknowledge  some  merit  in  the  men  who 
are  nearly  as  violent  as  Luther,  and  who  have  formed 
their  style  by  the  Hebrew  prophets.  We  could  not 
avoid  the  conclusion  in  reading  his  article,  that  the 
author  of  it  had  voted  for  Taylor.  If  this  be  so,  it 
is  to  be  viewed  rather  as  a  sort  of  apologetic  defence 
of  that  act  than  as  an  expression  of  opinion  un 
biassed  by  the  writer's  position. 


CRITICISM  AND  ABUSE 


o 


UR  readers  have  had,  from  time  to  time,  the 
privilege  of  seeing  extracts  from  Southern  news 
papers  directly  referring  to  the  "  Standard."  Most 
of  these,  we  are  sorry  to  say,  have  not  been  so  com 
mendatory  as  even  a  moderate  self-esteem  might  have 
desired.  Indeed  many  of  them  have  been  so  childish 
that  we  are  almost  inclined  to  believe  that  the  foun 
tain  of  youth  does  really  bubble  up  somewhere  in 
the  South,  and  that  some  of  our  editorial  brethren 
there  have  drunk  a  little  too  much  of  it. 

One  of  these  reciprocations  of  courtesy  had  cer 
tainly  the  charm  of  being  pithy  and  to  the  point. 
We  are  sorry  that  so  forcible  a  writer  should  refuse 
us  a  periodical  sight  of  his  lucubrations. 
"  You  and  your  paper  be  damned  !  " 
We  have  no  clew  to  the  authorship  of  this  elo 
quent  denunciation,  but  we  have  a  fancy  that  it 
came  from  the  editor  of  a  religious  paper.  People 
of  that  class  are  uncommonly  fond  of  these  sulphur 
ous  haruspications,  and  it  must  have  been  a  special 
relish  to  the  author  of  this  compact  refutation  of 


C 

Abolitionism  to  encounter  an  adversary  with  whom 
no  formalities  need  be  observed,  and  who  could  be 
treated  at  once  to  the  marrow  of  all  theological  con 
troversy.  We  shall  give  the  destiny  which  he  re 
commends  a  proper  amount  of  consideration.  His 
including  the  "  Standard  "  in  the  anathema  would 
seem  to  indicate  that  he  attributes  a  soul  to  it, 
which,  as  newspapers  go,  may  be  reckoned  no  small 
compliment. 

We  had  no  idea  that  we  were  such  terrible  fel 
lows.  To  be  sure,  we  knew  before  that  we  were 
incendiaries,  but  we  have  been  taught  to  believe 
that  it  was  the  happy  and  contented  peasantry  who 
made  up  the  combustible  and  explosive  matter  of 
the  Southern  Social  System.  However,  it  seems  to 
be  the  editors  whom  we  have  touched  off,  and  they 
very  naturally  treat  us  to  a  blowing-up  in  return. 
We  have  never  had  any  doubt  that  Anti-slavery  was 
more  than  a  match  for  them,  but  we  should  like  to 
know  whether  any  of  them  rubbed  the  "  Standard  " 
against  a  piece  of  sand-paper  to  see  if  it  would 
ignite. 

We  wonder  if  the  keeper  of  a  powder  magazine 
ever  gets  to  look  upon  ah1  his  fellow  citizens  who 
wear  iron  nails  in  their  shoes  as  incendiaries  ?  if  he 
considers  flint  and  steel  as  inventions  of  the  enemy 
of  man,  and  the  lightning,  that  ever  busy  scavenger 


c  12« : 

of  the  aerial  highways,  as  a  personal  injury  ?  Such, 
at  any  rate,  seems  to  be  the  mental  condition  at 
which  our  Southern  friends  have  arrived.  Though 
they  profess  to  live  in  a  house  of  such  asbestic  qual 
ity  as  might  defy  the  final  conflagration,  they  are  in 
such  constant  dread  of  fire  that  Mr.  Calhoun  has  even 
attempted  to  put  out  the  sun  with  a  four-ounce  squirt. 
The  contradictions  in  which  the  advocates  and 
apologists  of  slavery  involve  themselves  are  certainly 
diverting.  According  to  these  more  voluble  than 
logical  persons,  the  Abolitionists  are  retarding  the 
progress  of  emancipation.  Yet  it  is  these  very  co- 
workers  whom  the  Perpetualists  would  crush  at  all 
hazards.  Nothing,  not  even  invasion,  could  induce 
a  servile  revolt,  and  yet  the  mails  must  be  robbed 
lest  a  stray  eopy  of  an  Anti-slavery  journal  should 
fall  into  the  hands  of  a  wretched  helot  who  could  as 
easily  read  the  inscriptions  of  Nimrud.  We  have 
before  us  the  Southern  "  Quarterly  Review  "  for  July, 
1849,  containing  an  article  upon  Elwood  Fisher's 
notorious  pamphlet.  From  this  we  propose  to  cull 
an  extract  or  two  for  the  amusement  of  our  readers. 
It  is  written  in  an  argumentative  tone,  keeps  toler 
ably  clear  of  declamation,  and  is  wholly  free  from 
that  vulgar  and  snobbish  manner  of  alluding  to  the 
North  which  is  a  too  common  characteristic  of 
Southern  literature. 


Considered  as  a  plea  in  favor  of  Slavery  (even  if 
we  admitted  the  accuracy  of  the  preposterous  statis 
tics  on  which  it  is  based)  it  is  entirely  aside  from  the 
point  at  issue.  The  question  of  Slavery  is  not  a 
sectional  or  political  one,  nor  can  it  be  determined 
by  an  array  of  figures,  still  less  by  such  a  FalstafTs 
regiment  of  statistics  as  those  at  the  head  of  which 
Mr.  Fisher  has  been  sent  to  Coventry  by  all  honest 
men.  It  is  not  a  squabble  of  emulous  provincialisms, 
nor  a  party  expediency.  It  is  a  matter  of  ethics, 
which  includes  statistics  (because  prosperity  de 
pends  always  at  last  upon  righteousness),  but  which 
cannot  be  included  by  them.  We  are  quite  willing 
that  our  reviewer  should  prove  to  his  own  satisfac 
tion  that  the  South  is  richer,  wiser,  stronger,  and 
more  religious  than  the  North.  Nay,  we  are  only 
amused  when  another  writer  in  the  same  number  of 
the  "  Keview  "  (who  confesses  with  singular  hon 
esty  that  "it  is  impossible  for  any  man  to  learn  to 
talk  like  a  gentleman  but  by  being  bred  among 
gentlemen  ")  tells  us  that  the  English  language  is 
only  spoken  in  its  purity  to  the  south  of  Mason 
and  Dixon's  line.  This  is  written  and  published  in  a 
city  whose  leading  men  are  of  French  or  Scotch  de 
scent,  and  printed  in  a  journal  which  does  not  know 
the  difference  between  "  shall  "  and  "  will." 

We  did  not  suppose  that  even  a  gudgeon  could  be 
VOL.  n. 


[  ISO  3 

found  anywhere  who  would  so  much  as  nibble  at 
the  palpably  artificial  bait  with  which  our  Fisher 
decorates  the  ends  of  his  lines.  Our  simple-minded 
reviewer  evidently  has  his  suspicions.  He  swims 
around  every  surprising  "  fact/'  sniffs  at  it,  and  says 
doubtfully  once  or  twice,  "  if  this  be  true."  He  has 
evidently  a  faint  and  far-off  consciousness  that  this 
consideration  is  of  some  import.  But  presently  he 
remembers  that  there  is  a  gudgeon-public  waiting 
for  its  quarterly  dividend  of  flummery,  and  so  makes 
a  bold  gulp.  Yet  he  cannot  help  murmuring  plain 
tively  to  himself,  as  Mr.  Fisher  furnishes  him  with 
"  fact  "  after  "  fact,"  if  this  be  true !  A  melan 
choly  reflection  after  supping  so  luxuriously  at  this 
Barmecide  table,  whether  one  has  got  nothing  but 
east  wind  in  his  belly  after  all. 

After  demonstrating  that  the  "  peculiar  form  of 
civilization  "  at  the  South  is  the  very  best  and  hap 
piest  for  both  master  and  slave,  our  reviewer  glances 
hastily  at  the  risk  of  insurrection.  But  how  is  this  ? 
Is  there  a  man  anywhere  who  cannot  tell  on  which 
side  his  bread  is  buttered,  when  it  is  spread  thickly 
on  both  ?  In  Sheridan's  "  Critic,"  Father  Thames 
makes  his  entrance  at  the  rehearsal  with  both  his 
banks  on  one  side.  Our  author  is  clearly  a  little 
puzzled  by  finding  his  "  facts  "  in  the  same  position. 
But  instead  of  rectifying  the  error  like  Mr.  Puff, 


C  isi  3 

and  making  Thames  go  out  triumphantly  "  between 
his  banks/'  he  goes  all  the  way  back  to  ancient 
Athens  for  a  precedent  in  favor  of  the  less  natural 
arrangement.  In  the  nineteenth  year  of  the  Pelopon- 
nesian  War,  Agis  seized  and  fortified  Deceleia,  a  vil 
lage  only  twelve  miles  distant  from  Athens,  as  an 
asylum  for  fugitive  slaves.  Yet,  after  ten  years,  only 
twenty  thousand  had  availed  themselves  of  the  refuge. 
Spartan  protection,  however,  was  not  precisely  what 
a  slave  of  judgment  would  fly  to.  Our  author  seems 
to  forget  that  Deceleia  on  the  other  side  of  the  great 
lakes,  somewhat  more  than  twelve  miles  away,  to 
which  already  more  than  thirty  thousand  slaves  (ac 
cording  to  Mr.  Calhoun)  have  achieved  their  exodus. 
He  tells  us  that  there  is  no  instance  in  history  of  any 
serious  servile  insurrection,  although  in  ancient  times 
there  was  no  difference  of  color  between  master  and 
slave.  Are  we  to  understand,  then,  that  there  is  more 
antipathy  between  races  of  the  same  complexion  than 
between  white  and  black?  He  allows  that  there 
have  been  "uprisings  of  people  whose  undoubted 
rights  were  trampled  on  —  not  of  slaves."  The  in 
ference  from  this  would  seem  to  be  that  the  more 
people's  undoubted  rights  were  trampled  on,  the  less 
danger  there  is  of  their  seeking  redress.  The  insur 
rection  of  Haiti  our  author  attributes  to  the  instiga 
tion  of  the  French  Directory.  The  slaves  of  South 


C   132   ] 

Carolina,  he  affirms,  "  in  cases  of  emergency  would 
bare  their  faithful  bosoms  in  defence  of  our  families 
and  their  own/'  etc.  This  is  on  page  307.  Turning 
over  the  leaf,  we  find  on  page  308,  that  "  if  ever 
danger  or  suffering  occur  to  us  from  our  slave-sys 
tem,"  "  from  reckless  enthusiasts  associated  with  us 
in  one  government,  etc.,  will  come  all  the  mischief." 
But  what  conjuration  and  what  mighty  magic  are 
these  enthusiasts  to  use  in  order  to  make  rebels  of  a 
people  who  would  remain  obstinately  loyal  even  in 
"  a  contest  conducted  as  the  Deceleian  War,  for  the 
express  purpose  of  giving  them  liberty  ?  "  Father 
Thames  will  get  between  his  banks  after  all. 

Our  author  next  endeavors  to  persuade  himself 
that  in  case  of  disunion  the  South  would  be  stronger 
than  the  North.  It  would  then  have  (as  it  ought) 
all  the  cotton,  and  all  the  manufactures,  and  all  the 
commerce  which  are  now  shared  between  the  two 
sections.  Moreover  it  "might  bring  into  the  field 
a  million  of  armed  men,  men  born  on  horseback 
and  with  arms  in  their  hands."  Cavalry  of  this  sort 
must  be  inexpensive,  and  we  admit  that  we  have 
heard  of  no  such  births  at  the  North. 

On  the  whole  we  take  leave  of  our  worthy  re 
viewer  in  perfect  good-humor.  Like  an  unskilful 
chemical  manipulator,  he  tells  his  audience  that 
when  he  pours  the  liquid  in  one  phial  into  the  other 


C   133  1 

a  fine  blue  color  will  be  produced.  Unfortunately 
the  impression  produced  upon  the  mind  of  the  spec 
tator  is  of  a  vivid  and  undeniable  green.  But  this, 
the  confused  demonstrator  assures  him,  is  of  no  con 
sequence,  since,  had  the  materials  been  what  he  took 
them  for,  the  experiment  would  have  been  success 
ful. 

We  do  not  need  the  assurance  which  is  given  us 
in  another  article  that  our  Southern  friends  "  strive 
to  keep  the  Yankee  schoolmaster  at  bay."  We  are 
quite  certain  that  if  either  Mr.  Fisher  or  his  reviewer 
could  have  had  the  benefit  of  a  winter's  attendance 
at  one  of  our  district  schools,  neither  the  one  nor 
the  other  of  them  would  have  been  capable  of  such 
vile  cyphering.  We  are  afraid  that  both  of  them  re 
ceived  their  educations  where  the  birch  is  an  exotic 
tree. 


PUTTING      THE      CART      BEFORE 
THE  HORSE 


E 


(VERY  now  and  then  we  see  it  asserted  that  the 
system  of  chattel-slavery  at  the  South  is  no  worse 
than  that  of  wages-slavery  at  the  North,  and  that 
land  monopoly  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  evil.  The 
apostles  of  this  gospel  are  not  content  with  the  sim 
ple  preaching  of  their  doctrines,  but  pepper  their  dis 
courses  with  inter jectional  sniffs  at  the  Abolitionists. 
We  confess  that  we  can  see  no  logical  continuity 
here,  any  more  than  in  Charles  Lamb's  famous  case 
of  the  turnip  crop  and  the  boiled  shoulders  of  mut 
ton.  If  wages-slavery  were  the  worse  of  the  two, 
the  Abolitionists  would  not  be  guilty  of  making  it 
so,  nor  does  it  follow  that  chattel-slavery  is  not  bad 
enough  because  it  is  not  so  bad  as  something  else. 
But  it  is  the  fashion  for  every  one  who  has  a  pana 
cea  for  our  social  evils  to  head  his  advertisements 
with  a  Beware  of  Quacks  ! 

The  Abolitionists  do  not  profess  to  have  found 
any  panacea.  One  particular  evil  has  presented  it 
self  prominently  to  their  minds,  and  they  set  to  work 


C   135  3 

to  eradicate  it.  For  so  it  is  that  by  its  own  elective 
affinities  each  mode  of  reform  takes  up  the  minds 
that  belong  to  it  and  are  suited  to  carry  it  on,  and 
leaves  all  the  rest.  We  smile  sometimes  when  we 
see  an  honest  person  stumbling  over  the  Lazarus 
lying  on  his  own  doorstep  in  his  hurry  to  drop  in 
his  mite  for  another  Lazarus  at  the  Antipodes.  But 
meanwhile,  perhaps,  another  sympathy  is  making  its 
way  over  from  the  Antipodes  under  precisely  similar 
circumstances.  It  is  not  till  we  have  reached  the 
highest  class  in  the  school  of  life  that  we  learn  the 
great  lesson  that  Nature  is  wiser  than  we.  Nor  are 
we  satisfied  that  the  walls  of  limitation  which  she 
has  built  up  around  us  have  any  solidity,  till  we 
have  knocked  our  heads  against  them  all.  And  then, 
perhaps,  we  spend  the  rest  of  our  days  in  rubbing 
our  sore  pates.  No  doubt  the  ravens  which  supplied 
Elijah  left  some  poor  fellow  bewailing  the  loss  of  his 
dinner,  and  wishing  for  bow  and  arrows  to  make  in 
stant  examples  of  those  thievish  birds.  Let  us  en 
deavor,  brother  land-reformer,  not  only  to  be  sat 
isfied,  but  even  to  be  thankful  for  each  other,  and 
go  about  our  respective  works  with  a  better  heart. 
Perhaps  we  Abolitionists  have  but  one  idea,  but  that 
is  no  reason  why  you  should  endeavor  to  take  away 
from  us  the  one  idea  that  we  have.  Concede  for  the 
argument's  sake  that  you  are  in  the  same  predica- 


C 

ment,  and  suppose  we  should  try  the  experiment  of 
clubbing  our  two  ideas  for  the  benefit  of  those  that 
have  none.  Here  would  be  practical  Association. 
We  are  not  entirely  prepared  to  grant  that  the  Abo 
litionists  are  totally  depraved,  for  we  have  never  yet 
found  a  man  without  some  good  in  him,  no,  not 
even  a  doughface. 

Suppose  there  is  no  adequate  help  for  us  but  in  a 
thorough  social  reorganization,  yet  we  must  remem 
ber  that  the  first  thing  needful  is  to  convince  the 
stupid  Body  Politic  that  he  is  sick  at  all.  Or  rather, 
perhaps  we  must  begin  by  waking  him  up  to  make 
him  capable  of  conviction.  Once  waked  and  con 
vinced,  it  will  be  for  the  patient  himself  to  choose 
between  our  respective  pathies.  We  confess  that  the 
arguments  of  the  anti-land-monopolists  are  entirely 
conclusive,  and  we  admit  the  great  importance  (espe 
cially  in  our  new  and  as  yet  not  fully  peopled  coun 
try)  of  beginning  rightly.  But  after  all,  if  the 
remedy  is  to  be  a  radical  one,  and  of  that  compre 
hensive  kind  before  spoken  of,  it  may  be  questioned 
whether  the  scheme  of  either  the  Land-reformer  or 
the  Abolitionist  alone  will  be  sufficient. 

On  the  whole  we  think  it  wise  for  each  man  to 
put  his  hand  strenuously  to  that  work  which  has  for 
him  the  strongest  attraction.  We  may  then  be  sure 
that  we  are  all  working  together  for  good.  Let  us 


C 

take  courage  and  be  thankful  that  the  good  Father 
has  ravens  ready  for  every  Elijah  perishing  in  the 
wilderness.  We  will  not  complain  that  they  are  not 
all  detailed  for  the  particular  service  which  we  think 
most  important,  and  surely  we  will  not  shoot  poisoned 
arrows  at  the  divinely  commissioned  birds  flying 
with  the  bread  of  life  in  any  direction.  Or,  suppose 
the  ravens  fall  to  quarrelling  with  beak  and  claw 
among  themselves,  what  becomes  of  the  bread,  and, 
worse  yet,  of  the  Elijahs  ? 

We  do  not  see  how  any  advantage  is  to  spring 
from  disputes  as  to  whether  this  or  that  injurious 
system  is  entitled  to  an  evil  preeminence,  but  we 
are  not  to  be  supposed  as  granting  that  chattel-slav 
ery  is  no  worse  than  wages-slavery.  It  is  one  of 
those  assertions  which  recoil  disastrously  upon  those 
who  make  them.  Opinion  resembles  a  pendulum  in 
this,  that  it  swings  as  far  back  beyond  the  gravitat 
ing  point  on  one  side  as  it  has  been  forced  beyond 
it  upon  the  other.  And  here  the  parallel  unfortu 
nately  too  often  ends.  For,  having  an  inward  faculty 
of  resistance,  it  ceases  to  oscillate  and  remains  ob 
stinately  fixed  in  its  retrograde  position. 

This  matter  of  comparative  miseries  is  hardly  one 
to  be  settled  by  argument.  Our  human  instincts  de 
cide  it  for  us  at  once,  and  without  appeal.  We  do 
not  believe  that  there  is  a  hired  laborer  (man  or 


C   138  n 

woman)  in  America  who  would  exchange  conditions 
with  the  fattest  and  sleekest  slave  at  the  South,  not 
even  though  it  were  to  be  owned  by  Henry  Clay  or 
General  Taylor  himself.  Were  the  question  one 
solely  of  physical  well-being,  it  would  not  bear  argu 
ment  for  a  moment.  The  Southern  "  Quarterly  Ee- 
view  "  estimates  the  annual  expense  of  a  plantation 
slave  at  thirty-five  dollars  a  year,  or  less  than  ten 
cents  a  day. 

But  it  is  not  a  question  of  mere  bodily  comfort. 
The  condition  of  the  hired  laborer  everywhere  is  one 
which  admits  of  exceptions  in  favor  of  superior  en 
ergy  and  intelligence.  That  of  the  slave  knows  no 
exceptions,  but  crushes  all  to  one  dead  level  of  stupid 
animalism  or  sullen  despair.  The  slave  had  no  hope 
but  that  weary  northward  flight,  the  bloodhounds, 
the  worse  than  bloodhounds  at  his  heels,  and  that 
horrible  distrust  of  every  human  being  in  his  heart. 
And  at  the  very  outset  we  are  met  by  this  great  dis 
tinction  of  complexion  which  makes  the  poor  run 
away  an  object  of  suspicion  south  of  Mason  and 
Dixon's  line,  and  of  lifelong  contumely  north  of  it. 

Nor  is  it  only  in  the  condition  of  the  slave  that 
the  Abolitionist  finds  an  imperative  reason  for  com 
bating  the  atrocious  system  of  which  he  is  the  vic 
tim.  Slavery  has  paralyzed  those  fine  instincts  and 
energies  of  our  republic  which  should  have  rendered 


C  139  3 

it  not  only  the  example  but  the  protector  and  de 
fender  of  freedom  all  over  the  world.  It  has  cor 
rupted  the  integrity  of  our  public  men  and  made 
them  as  statesmen  only  not  reproaches  to  each  other. 
Worse  than  this,  it  has  corrupted  the  foundations 
of  our  humanity  itself,  and  made  things  customary 
with  us  which  ought  to  thrill  us  with  indignation 
and  horror. 

Allow  that  by  freeing  the  slave  you  only  raise 
him  to  the  ownership  of  himself,  and  that  this  in 
the  present  condition  of  society  is  a  losing  species 
of  property.  But  you  also  do  more.  The  same  blow 
which  strikes  off  the  fetters  of  the  slave  makes  our 
public  men  (the  exemplars  and  moulds  of  our  youth) 
also  owners  of  themselves,  nay,  to  a  greater  or  less 
degree,  liberates  every  one  of  us.  Then  you  and  I 
and  all  of  us  rise  up.  If  it  be  said  that  slavery  is 
only  one  pustule  indicating  the  presence  of  disease 
in  the  whole  social  system,  we  are  not  concerned  to 
deny  it.  Only,  let  not  this  be  an  argument  for 
apathy,  for  letting  alone,  or  for  so  generalizing  and 
dissipating  the  efforts  of  reform  that  they  fail  of 
reaching  particular  evils. 

We  have  great  doubts  of  the  possibility  of  arous 
ing  a  community  to  the  wickedness  of  monopolizing 
land,  who  feel  no  stings  of  conscience  at  monopoliz 
ing  man.  We  do  not  believe  that  a  man  can  be  con- 


C 

vinced  of  the  sinf  ulness  of  paying  small  wages,  while 
he  is  allowed  to  retain  his  belief  in  the  rightf  ulness 
of  paying  none  at  all.  In  short,  we  do  not  feel  en 
tirely  convinced  that  it  is  best  to  put  the  cart  before 
the  horse.  At  the  same  time  we  are  willing  to  grant 
the  perfect  right  of  our  neighbor  to  do  so,  if  he  find 
it  profitable. 

It  is  best  to  proceed  gradually  with  the  poor  old 
World  and  satisfy  it  of  its  miserable  condition  by  de 
grees.  Let  us  assault  (at  least,  let  those  of  us  who 
feel  it  a  duty)  the  largest  sins  first,  for  we  may  be 
sure  that  if  one  devil  brings  seven  others  in  with 
him  he  takes  at  least  as  many  out.  At  present  there 
are  so  many  kind  friends  speaking  at  once  and  divid 
ing  their  breath  between  recommending  their  own 
particular  pills  and  charging  each  other  with  the 
intention  to  poison,  that  the  world  seems  really  in 
danger  of  a  serious  relapse.  There  is  nothing  to  be 
eaten,  drunk,  or  avoided,  but  some  one  has  found  in 
it  the  root  of  all  evil,  and  amid  so  much  confusion 
of  Indian  Doctors,  Vegetable  Doctors,  Cold  and  Hot 
Water  Doctors,  and  what  not,  this  generation  feels 
inclined  to  go  on  in  the  old  way  as  its  elders  had 
done  before  it.  Meanwhile  the  rightfulness  of  our 
own  opinions  and  measures  in  no  wise  depends  upon 
the  wrongfulness  of  those  of  anybody  else,  nor  has 
any  natural  connection  with  it.  The  first  thing  is 


C   141   3 

to  know  our  own  business  and  the  next  to  mind  it. 
We  think  that  the  Abolitionists  are  laboring  in  their 
proper  vocation,  and  are  happy  to  think  that  there 
are  others  doing  the  same. 


CANADA 

_L  HE  gathering  of  money  is  the  only  thing  that 
withdraweth  the  hearts  of  Englishmen  from  the 
prince/'  said  Sir  Thomas  More  nearly  three  centu 
ries  and  a  half  ago,  and  the  saying  is  as  fresh  still 
as  if  it  had  been  made  by  a  poet  instead  of  an  un- 
der-sheriff.  Among  the  Spanish  race,  revolution  has 
almost  supplanted  the  bull-fight  as  a  popular  amuse 
ment,  in  France  it  is  a  kind  of  recognized  make 
shift  for  election,  in  Germany  it  is  arrived  at  by 
something  like  a  chemical  analysis,  but  among  the 
Anglo-Saxon  family  it  continues  to  be  an  explosive 
gas  generated  in  the  dark  void  of  the  empty  pocket. 
The  desideratum  of  English  statecraft  would  seem  to 
be  a  kind  of  Davy's  safety-lamp  with  which  the  adven 
turous  ChanceUor  of  the  Exchequer  might  descend 
to  glean  the  last  particles  of  ore  from  that  long- 
worked  mine  without  danger  of  being  blown  out  of 
office.  A  fall  in  public  securities  is  the  change  whose 
fear  perplexes  English  monarchs,  and  the  hand  which 
writes  mene,  mene  on  the  walls  of  Downing  Street 
is  that  of  the  Reporter  of  the  Stock  Market. 


C 

As  long  as  x  remains  an  unknown  quantity,  the 
oretic  demonstrations  make  small  impression  upon 
the  mind  of  John  Bull,  but  let  him  understand  that 
x  and  bread  and  butter  are  equal  terms,  and  he  is 
awake  at  once.  In  regard  to  Canada,  John  has  been 
slowly  coming  to  the  conclusion  that,  whatever  else 
it  might  be,  it  was  certainly  expensive.  But  here 
another  quality  of  his  mind  becomes  active,  namely, 
his  pride.  He  is  one  of  the  largest  landholders  on 
the  planet,  and  he  is  fearful  lest  he  should  lessen 
his  consideration  among  his  fellows  by  giving  up 
even  a  piece  of  territory  which  is  draining  his 
pockets.  The  physical  strength  of  England  is  Saxon 
chiefly,  but  the  hard,  sharp  Norman  intellect  stamped 
itself  easily  and  durably  upon  the  yielding  clay  of 
the  softer  conquered  race.  In  the  common  law  of 
England  the  Saxon  element  predominates,  but  pub 
lic  opinion  is  largely  Norman.  The  Norman  was  a 
robber,  and  stealing  was  in  his  view  honorable  if 
the  object  were  a  kingdom  or  a  province,  and  the 
theft  were  accomplished  by  violence  and  demanded 
courage  for  the  perpetration.  He  was  the  Colonel 
Blood  of  the  middle  age,  too  much  of  a  gentleman 
and  soldier  to  pick  a  pocket,  but  not  above  the 
grander  larceny  of  crowns.  He  could  endure  any 
hardship  but  that  of  getting  an  honest  livelihood. 
Though  the  strength  and  greatness  of  England  have 


C   144  ] 

for  centuries  rested  mainly  upon  trade,  yet  trade  has 
not  hitherto  achieved  for  itself  the  prestige  of  en 
tire  respectability  in  the  English  mind.  The  British 
Merchant  is  the  toast  of  public  dinners,  but  no 
sooner  has  the  British  Merchant  acquired  a  fortune, 
than  he  sets  about  contriving  how  he  shall  save  his 
children  from  the  contamination  of  the  paternal 
caste.  He  gets  his  sons  into  public  office,  into  the 
Church,  the  Army,  or  the  Bar.  Some  kind  of  a 
living  upon  others  they  must  have,  something  that 
approaches  the  Norman  standard  of  respectability, 
honorable  plunder. 

The  Colonies  are  dear  to  England  as  matters  of 
pride,  disconnected  from  any  sordid  idea  of  profit, 
and  as  supplying  offices  for  young  men  of  what  are 
oddly  enough  called  good  families,  by  which  those 
are  meant  which  have  not  been  generally  distin 
guished  for  the  purity  of  their  public  and  private 
morals.  Canada  is  especially  dear  as  a  trophy  won 
from  her  ancient  enemy,  France.  But  England  is 
beginning  to  have  some  dim  appreciation  of  so  vul 
gar  and  tradesmanlike  a  thing  as  the  balance-sheet. 
The  figures  and  statistics  of  the  calculating  Saxon 
force  themselves  upon  her  attention  more  and  more. 
Glory  must  nowadays  bring  an  indorser  with  her  to 
the  Rothschilds.  England  is  fast  finding  out  that  her 
colonies  are  dear  in  another  sense.  The  question  is 


C   145  J 

one  between  pride  and  expense,  and  it  asks  no  super 
natural  power  of  prophecy  to  foretell  how  it  will  be 
eventually  settled.  What  length  of  time  must  elapse 
before  the  empty  pocket  starves  her  into  concession 
is  a  point  of  obscurer  speculation. 

At  any  rate  the  question  of  the  separation  of  the 
North  American  Provinces  from  the  Mother  Coun 
try  has  now  fairly  begun  to  be  discussed  on  both 
sides  of  the  ocean.  That  it  would  be  wise  in  Eng 
land  to  yield  gracefully,  we  think  is  beyond  a  doubt. 
If  it  be  the  mission  of  the  English  race  to  plant  the 
germs  of  self-government  in  every  quarter  of  the 
globe,  it  is  most  desirable  that  the  different  portions 
of  that  race,  wherever  settled  and  however  governed, 
should  be  able  to  communicate  everywhere  the  entire 
moral  force  of  a  great  united  nation.  The  ties  of 
ancestry  and  of  a  common  past,  so  rudely  snapped 
between  the  Mother  Country  and  the  Thirteen  Col 
onies  by  the  American  War  of  Independence,  are 
beginning  to  reunite  themselves.  Every  steamer  car 
ries  and  fastens  a  spider-thread  of  sympathy  and 
interest,  each  invisible,  but  the  sum  of  which  will 
at  last  rebind  firmly  together  the  little  Island  and 
the  Daughter  it  had  disinherited  and  disowned.  It 
cannot  be  but  that  the  experience  of  seventy  years 
has  made  England  wiser  and  that  she  will  be  slow 
to  estrange  another  child. 


VOL.   II. 


C   146  ] 

As  to  the  probability  o£  the  separation  of  the 
Canadas  from  Britain,  speculation  is  useless,  since 
time  and  circumstance  will  decide  the  question  soon. 
We  are  not  inclined  to  think,  however,  that  such  a 
movement  as  that  lately  begun  in  Montreal  will  go 
backward.  Here,  at  least,  there  is  manifest  destiny. 
England  is  no  longer  the  only  central  sun  of  an 
Anglo-Saxon  system.  The  great  fragment  which 
wandered  off,  a  separate  planet,  and  has  become  the 
United  States,  begins  to  pull,  with  gradually  increas 
ing  force,  the  nearer  satellites.  Canada  gravitates 
toward  the  larger  and  more  neighboring  body.  This 
is  not  the  manifest  destiny  of  aggressive  rapine,  as 
in  the  case  of  Texas,  but  obedience  to  the  attraction 
of  natural  laws. 

But,  setting  aside  for  the  present  the  attraction  of 
the  American  Kepublic,  it  is  at  least  certain  that  the 
centrifugal  force  of  the  Provinces  is  steadily  increas 
ing  and  carrying  them  farther  and  farther  from  the 
British  centre.  Interest  draws  the  Colonists  of  Eng 
lish  descent  in  a  direction  opposite  to  predilection 
and  habit.  And,  even  supposing  an  undiminished 
loyalty  in  these,  there  must  be  taken  into  account 
the  presence  of  a  neutral  body  in  a  large  subjugated 
population,  which  has  retained  its  language  and  tra 
ditions,  and  whose  vis  inertice  must  be  overcome  by 
an  intenser  loyalty  on  the  part  of  the  rest. 


[   147  3 

In  case  of  separation,  two  plans  have  been  pro 
posed,  independence  and  annexation  to  the  United 
States.  Here  again  the  French  element  in  the  popu- 
lation  must  be  considered.  If  not  numerous  enough 
to  set  up  for  themselves,  they  would  certainly  offer 
very  perplexing  material  to  be  worked  into  the  fab 
ric  of  the  new  Kepublic.  This  with  other  circum 
stances  of  convenience  and  interest  would  certainly 
lead  to  a  proposal  for  annexation.  The  proposal  once 
made,  annexation  may  be  looked  upon  as  a  certain 
event. 

As  enemies  of  Slavery,  we  should  consider  it  an 
event  to  be  desired.  It  will  give  greater  preponder 
ance  to  the  Free  States,  and  infuse  into  the  veins  of 
the  Kepublic  fresh  blood  uncorrupted  by  the  scrofula 
of  slavery.  The  mere  proposal  of  it  will  do  what 
principle  and  conscience  have  never  yet  been  strong 
enough  to  accomplish,  and  divide  the  national  par 
ties  into  a  northern  and  a  southern  organization.  It 
will  unite  whatever  of  Anti-slavery  there  may  be  at 
the  South  with  the  northern  party,  thus  giving  it 
more  confidence  and  strength  and  preparing  it  to 
receive  more  radical  ideas. 

But  it  will  do  a  great  deal  more  than  this,  and  al 
ready  the  well-trained  noses  (of  wax)  of  the  editor 
hounds  who  hunt  down  the  prey  for  the  old  parties 
begin  to  snuff  the  lion  crouching  hard  by.  In  case 


C   !48   3 

of  annexation  the  first  question  to  arise  will  be  as 
to  the  consenting  of  the  new  States  to  that  clause 
in  the  Constitution  which  provides  for  the  surrender 
of  fugitive  slaves.  This  will  be  rather  a  perplexing 
affair  to  our  hitherto  prosperous  politicians.  We 
shall  get  some  new  ideas  on  the  however-bounded- 
ness  of  our  glorious  country.  How  fearful  will  our 
Democrats  become  of  a  rupture  in  our  peaceful  re 
lations  with  England,  our  Whigs  how  careful  for 
the  strict  maintenance  of  treaty  stipulations  !  We 
shall  find  that  the  area  of  freedom  can  only  be  ex 
tended  Southward,  and  shah1  discover  the  enormous 
difference  'twixt  tweedle-dum  and  tweedle-dee  when 
the  breath  of  freedom  and  not  that  of  slavery  fills 
the  pipe. 

The  constitutionality  of  annexation  has  been  set 
tled  by  recent  precedent.  Or  rather  it  has  been 
settled  that  what  the  slave  power  demands  is  always 
constitutional.  Should  Canada  apply  for  admission 
to  the  Union,  we  shall  have  an  opportunity  of  learn 
ing  whether  the  Constitution  is  capable  of  becoming 
pliable  under  the  hands  of  Freedom.  Any  event  is 
desirable  which  shall  exhibit  the  Southern  oligarchy 
in  its  true  light,  and  which  shall  reduce  the  slave 
holders  to  a  more  odious  and  contemptible  minority. 
Therefore  we  hope  before  long  to  hear  the  knock  of 
Canada  at  the  door  of  the  Confederacy,  and  to  see 


C 

the  inhospitable  confusion  produced  within  by  the 
advent  of  so  awkward  and  unseasonable  a  visitor, 
at  the  moment,  too,  when  we  were  expecting  Miss 
Calif ornia  with  a  slave  to  carry  her  parasol. 


CALIFORNIA 

VJONTRARY  to  the  well-founded  apprehensions  of  a 
large  majority  of  the  opponents  of  Slavery,  Califor 
nia  has  adopted  a  Constitution  excluding  the  curse 
of  human  bondage  from  her  borders.  If  we  may  be 
lieve  the  Whig  newspapers,  the  abolitionists  are  dis 
appointed  at  this  result.  Since  the  election  of  General 
Taylor,  it  has  been  discovered  that  these  unhappy 
Ishmaelites  make  a  trade  of  Anti-slavery,  a  reproach 
which  comes  somewhat  ungracefully  from  those  (at 
least)  who  professed  a  willingness  to  join  the  Free 
Soil  party  if  it  were  only  sure  of  success.  It  is  a  re 
proach,  moreover,  which  we  who  live  in  Mr.  Palfrey's 
district  find  it  hard  to  comprehend.  We  cannot 
conceive  how  any  trader  should  be  able  to  make  his 
political  fortune  out  of  an  abolition  venture,  unless 
by  some  such  happy  contingency  as  enabled  Lord 
Timothy  Dexter  to  enrich  himself  by  sending  warm 
ing-pans  to  the  West  Indies. 

Abolitionists  are  not  so  unanimous  that  it  is  safe 
to  speak  for  more  than  one  of  them  at  a  time.  We 
know  one,  certainly,  who  is  sincerely  thankful  for 


C 

the  result  of  the  Convention  in  California,  hampered 
as  the  slavery  restriction  is  with  a  spirit  of  foolish 
and  inhuman  exclusiveness  toward  the  African  race. 
But  the  experience  of  an  abolitionist  is  not  such  as 
to  render  him  childishly  confiding.  In  America  the 
poet's  saw  is  reversed,  and  it  is  slavery's  battle 

which, 

"  Though  seeming  lost,  is  ever  won." 

From  year  to  year  we  grow  more  nervously  sus 
picious  of  Trojan  horses  and  are  especially  fearful 
when  either  of  the  great  political  parties  offers  us 
anything  in  the  way  of  gift.  With  regard  to  Cali 
fornia  the  Whigs  occupy  very  much  the  same  posi 
tion  which  Caleb  Balderstone  did  to  Mr.  Gilder  and 
his  advancement  as  Queen's  cooper.  Though  he 
had  no  concern  in  it  whatever,  he  was  very  willing 
to  claim  the  merit  of  the  appointment  after  it  was 
made.  We  are  as  ignorant  as  a  "  Washington  Cor 
respondent  "  of  the  object  of  Mr.  Butler  King's 
mission,  but  he  was  certainly  an  odd  person  to  select 
as  an  Anti-slavery  propagandist.  There  is  no  want 
of  charity  in  supposing  that  General  Taylor  will  at 
least  be  lenient  toward  Southern  institutions,  and 
accordingly  we  already  hear  rumors  that  California 
is  to  be  divided  into  four  states,  two  north  and  two 
south  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  line.  Ominously 
enough,  the  name  of  Mr.  Clay  is  mentioned  in  con- 


[    152    3 

nection  with  this  movement  —  of  Mr.  Clay,  the  re 
presentative  American  man  on  the  subject  of  slav 
ery.  Abolitionists  must  be  upon  the  watch.  They 
should  not  regard  the  exclusion  of  Slavery  even 
from  the  whole  of  California  as  an  Anti-slavery  tri 
umph.  It  is  no  such  thing,  but  merely  Freedom 
holding  her  own.  The  game  of  Mr.  Calhoun  and 
the  advocates  of  Slavery  has  always  been  to  demand 
a  great  deal  more  than  they  cared  about  getting. 
This  worked  well  in  two  ways.  They  gained  the 
credit  of  conceding  all  above  the  point  they  were 
really  anxious  to  attain,  and,  at  the  same  time, 
Northern  doughfaces  could  make  their  peace  with 
their  constituents  by  assuming  to  have  gained  all 
that  they  had  merely  not  basely  surrendered.  Be 
yond  a  doubt  this  will  be  Mr.  Calhoun's  course 
in  regard  to  California.  He  will  resist  the  admis 
sion  of  that  territory  as  a  free  state  to  the  last  mo 
ment,  and  at  last  consent  to  divide  it  equally  between 
freedom  and  slavery,  playing  Mr.  Clay,  the  apostle 
of  compromise,  as  the  last  trump-card.  Mr.  Calhoun 
is  a  cunning  jockey.  He  asks  twice  as  much  for 
his  horse  as  he  means  to  take,  and  finally  persuades 
his  unlucky  victim  (who  does  not  want  the  ani 
mal  at  all)  to  buy  it  for  twice  its  worth,  because 
it  is  such  a  bargain.  But  these  horses  of  his  are, 
like  those  of  Diomed,  foddered  with  human  flesh, 


n  153  3 

and    the   North   has   bought   too   many   of    them 
already. 

On  the  other  hand  it  is  possible  that  it  is  not  the 
half  of  California,  but  the  whole  of  New  Mexico, 
which  Mr.  Calhoun  intends  to  struggle  for.  And,  if 
this  be  the  case,  we  confess  that  we  have  little  hope 
of  seeing  him  defeated.  Nothing  is  to  be  expected 
of  the  Democratic  party,  who  have  lost  office  and 
are  willing  to  regain  it  at  any  expense  of  their  cardi 
nal  principles,  nothing  from  the  Whigs,  whose  com 
plexion  could  hardly  be  heightened  by  a  blush  for 
any  new  piece  of  treachery.  When  men  have  been 
treacherous,  and  the  evidence  has  been  found  in 
their  pockets,  they  hate  more  than  anything  else  the 
cause  which  they  have  betrayed.  It  is  really  amusing 
to  see  the  Whigs  forced  to  capture  and  spike  their 
own  Anti-slavery  batteries  which  they  erected  against 
the  Democrats.  Affirming  that  their  President  and 
his  cabinet  are  Anti-slavery,  they  use  their  utmost 
endeavor  to  keep  out  of  Congress  every  Anti-slavery 
Whig.  We  can  only  compliment  their  honesty  at 
the  expense  of  their  intelligence.  If  the  aim  of  Pre 
sident  Taylor's  administration  be  to  keep  slavery  out 
of  the  territories,  and  the  Democrats  in  Congress  are 
not  to  be  relied  on,  why  make  a  point  of  sacrificing 
every  member  who  would  add  one  to  the  chances  of 
attaining  an  end  so  ardently  desired  by  the  adminis- 


C   154  H 

tration  ?  We  commend  to  the  serious  reflection  of 
the  Whig  party  the  following  stanza  from  Cole 
ridge's  "  Devil's  Walk  :  "  — 

"  Down  the  river  did  glide,  with  wind  and  with  tide, 

A  pig  with  vast  celerity ; 

And  the  Devil  looked  wise  as  he  saw  how,  the  while, 
It  cut  its  own  throat :  *  There  ! '  quoth  he,  with  a  smile, 
'  Goes  England's  commercial  prosperity. '  " 

It  seems  to  us  that  there  is  a  pretty  analogy  here 
with  the  political  prosperity  of  the  Whigs,  only  that 
in  their  case  the  satire  is  heightened  by  the  poor 
creature's  cutting  its  throat  in  an  attempt  to  swim 
up  Salt  River  instead  of  down. 

It  is  fortunate  for  the  cause  of  Right  and  Free 
dom  that  the  Whigs  have  not  succeeded  against  Gid- 
dings  as  they  have  (hitherto)  against  Palfrey.  It  is 
well  that  there  should  be  one  watchful  eye  in  Con 
gress  to  detect,  and  one  fearless  tongue  to  expose, 
any  trick  which  the  party  at  present  dominant  may 
attempt  to  play  upon  the  nation.  The  more  fully  the 
hollowness  and  duplicity  of  either  of  the  great  par 
ties  is  exposed,  the  better.  The  Whigs  might  have 
defeated  the  annexation  of  Texas  as  a  slave  state,  if 
they  had  thrown  themselves  boldly  upon  the  Anti- 
slavery  side  of  the  question.  But,  having  made  a 
Constitutional  point  of  it,  and  that  having  been  de 
cided  against  them,  Texas  will  afford  a  precedent 


C   155  U 

and  apology  for  New  Mexico  and  Santa  Fe.  Let 
Abolitionists,  meanwhile,  continue  to  sow  the  seed 
of  abhorrence  of  slavery  as  a  moral  and  not  a  polit 
ical  question,  and  they  may  be  certain  that,  like  the 
Scotch  gardener's  trees,  it  will  be  growing  while 
they  are  sleeping. 


GENERAL  BEM'S    CONVERSION 


T, 


HOSE  who  have  consistently  maligned  the  cause 
of  order  and  constitutional  freedom  in  Hungary 
have  extracted  what  poisonous  acid  they  were  able 
from  Bern's  assumption  of  Mahometanism.  This 
acid  they  would  fain  apply  as  a  test  whereby  to  ap 
prove  the  heroic  Magyars  plated  ware  and  not  pure 
metal.  The  systems  of  such  persons  must  be  so  con 
stituted  as  to  secrete  venom  from  mother's  milk. 

We  confess  that  we  see  nothing  very  extraordinary 
in  Bern's  conduct.  He  had  lived  in  every  Christian 
territory  of  Europe  except  Russia.  He  had  in  his 
own  person  experimentally  tried  the  Christianity  of 
all  Christendom.  If  he  had  no  country,  it  had  been 
taken  from  him  by  Christian  princes.  If  he  were  an 
Ishmaelite,  he  had  been  made  so  by  those  who  pro 
fess  the  religion  of  Jesus.  He  had  seen  his  country 
women  scourged  in  Christian  market-places  with 
Christian  knouts,  and  his  friends  starving  in  Chris 
tian  exile  or  entombed  alive  in  Christian  dungeons. 
They  were  most  Christian  Majesties  who  demanded 
of  the  Turk  that  he  should  violate  the  sacred  rites 


C  157  ] 

of  a  hospitality  as  old  as  the  human  heart,  by  deliv 
ering  up  the  suppliants  who  sate  at  his  gates  to  the 
justice  of  Haynau  and  the  Orthodoxy  of  Nicholas. 
Bern  might  have  addressed  the  Sultan  in  the  words 
of  Coriolanus  to  Aufidius,  — 

"  Now  this  extremity 

Hath  brought  me  to  thy  hearth  ;  not  out  of  hope  — 
Mistake  me  not  —  to  save  my  life, 

.     but  in  mere  spite, 
To  be  full  quit  of  those  my  banishers, 
Stand  I  before  thee  here.     Then  if  thou  hast 
A  heart  of  wreak  in  thee,  that  wilt  revenge 
Thine  own  particular  wrongs,  and  stop  those  maims 
Of  shame  seen  through  thy  country,  speed  thee  straight, 
And  make  my  misery  serve  thy  turn ;  so  use  it 
That  my  revengeful  services  may  prove 
As  benefits  to  thee,  for  I  will  fight 

.     with  the  spleen 
Of  all  the  under  fiends." 

Had  Bern  turned  renegade  for  the  mere  sake  of 
saving  his  own  life,  he  should  have  taken  (as  there 
is  already  a  Keshid  Pasha  in  Turkey)  the  title  of 
Wretched  Pasha.  But  it  was  the  ghost  of  murdered 
Poland  which  beckoned  him  to  the  Turkish  Camp, 
that  ghost  which  for  the  last  forty  years  has  glided 
ominous  into  the  vacant  chair  whenever  the  Mac- 
beths  of  Austria,  Prussia,  and  Russia  have  held 
council  or  festival.  Revenge  is  as  good  a  Christian 
as  Persecution. 


TURKISH   TYRANNY  AND  AMER 
ICAN 


T, 


HE  last  European  steamer  brings  us  what  is  said 
to  be  the  final  determination  of  the  Turkish  Gov 
ernment  in  regard  to  the  Hungarian  exiles.  The 
Sultan  will  not  be  the  Czar's  jackal,  but  only  his 
jailer.  "  Allah  forbid,"  says  the  pious  Ottoman, 
"  that  I  should  break  the  law  of  the  prophet !  I  will 
not  only  not  surrender  these  unhappy  fugitives  who 
have  sought  my  protection,  but  I  will  so  far  extend 
the  rites  of  hospitality,  that  they  shall  remain  my 
guests  for  life." 

"  Will  you  walk  into  my  parlor  ? 
Said  the  spider  to  the  fly." 

There  needs  no  farther  proof  that  the  Turk  has  be 
come  thoroughly  Occidentalized.  We  shall  not  be 
surprised  to  hear  before  long  that  he  is  an  attendant 
on  stated  preaching.  He  certainly  behaves  very 
much  like  a  Christian.  We  see  no  escape  for  Kos- 
suth  and  his  fellow  fugitives,  unless  their  jailer  has 
daughters  enough  to  give  all  of  them  a  chance 


I  159  3 

at  the  good  fortune  of  Gilbert  h  Becket  and  Lord 
Bateman. 

Doubtless  this  conduct  of  the  Sultan  will  excite 
the  reprobation  of  nearly  all  Christendom,  although 
the  Turk,  being  no  reader  of  newspapers,  is  not 
likely  to  be  much  influenced  by  public  opinion. 
Probably,  as  is  usual  in  such  cases,  the  occupants  of 
glass  houses  will  be  the  most  eager  to  throw  stones. 
Brother  Jonathan  will  be  among  the  first  to  begin 
the  experiment  of  lapidation.  Already  we  see  our 
editorial  brethren  picking  up  their  smoothest  and 
hardest  pebbles,  though  we  think  that  the  strongest 
arm  among  them  will  hardly  contrive  to  get  his  mis 
sile  over  the  three  thousand  miles  of  ocean.  With  a 
longer  or  shorter  parabolic  curve,  each  makes  its 
momentary  splash  and  sinks  forever. 

We  will  say  this  for  Brother  Jonathan,  that  his 
first  impulses  are  commonly  right  and  generous. 
But,  before  he  commences  oculist,  he  should  bethink 
himself  that  there  are  beams  enough  in  his  own  eye 
to  answer  the  demands  of  half  the  lumber-yards  of 
Europe.  It  is  very  weU  to  be  indignant  at  the  "  ex 
tradition  "  of  Kossuth  and  his  friends,  or  rather  at 
the  Czar's  demanding  it.  Extradition  is  as  good  a 
word  as  another  to  pick  a  quarrel  out  of,  but  the 
act  implied  in  it  would  stink  as  foully  in  the  nostrils 
of  all  honest  men  though  wrapt  up  in  the  lavender 


1 16°  3 

of  choicest  phrases.  Suppose  the  Czar  should  send 
to  President  Taylor  an  autograph  letter  of  somewhat 
the  following  purport :  "  To  our  well-beloved  cousin 
Zachary,  President  of  the  North  American  Republic, 
Defender  of  the  Punic  faith  (toward  Mexico),  Hered 
itary  lord  and  owner  of  Cuffee,  Sambo,  Juno,  &c., 
&c.,  Greeting :  We,  Nicholas,  Emperor,  &e.,  being 
conscious  that  we  are  subject  to  the  like  infirmities 
as  our  fellow  mortals,  and  being  at  present  especially 
afflicted  with  a  tender  conscience  in  regard  to  the 
failings  of  our  neighbors,  do  most  heartily  recipro 
cate  the  solicitude  of  our  most  excellent  Brother 
Jonathan  in  behalf  of  our  health  and  well-being, 
and  desire  to  know  whether  it  be  true  (as  we  have, 
with  pain,  heard)  that  the  Constitution  of  our  said 
brother  is  suffering  from  the  effects  of  poison  ad 
ministered  in  the  year  of  God  1787  in  the  following 
form,  to  wit :  Article  IV.,  section  2,  paragraph  3  "  ? 
This  would  be  rather  an  awkward  missive  to  an 
swer.  We  do  not  think  that  Brother  Jonathan  is 
worse  than  his  neighbors,  only  he  has  got  into  the 
habit  of  setting  himself  up  to  be  unco  guid.  It 
is  only  a  month  or  two  since  he  read  in  the  papers, 
seeming  to  think  it  rather  a  good  joke  than  other 
wise,  a  story  something  like  this.  A  taker  of  Da 
guerreotype  likenesses  in  Indiana  was  applied  to  by 
a  colored  man  to  take  a  miniature  of  him  to  be  sent 


C 

to  his  betrothed.  Discovering  in  some  way  that  his 
sitter  was  a  fugitive  slave,  he  hired  him  as  a  servant, 
and,  under  pretence  of  going  to  Philadelphia,  took 
him  to  Kentucky  and  betrayed  him  to  his  former 
master,  receiving  for  this  constitutional  act  the  stip 
ulated  reward.  Truly  the  sun,  which  shines  alike 
upon  the  just  and  the  unjust,  and  which  took  the 
portrait  that  served  for  the  poor  runaway's  identifi 
cation,  was  never  before  made  the  accomplice  of  so 
base  an  act.  We  wish  that  the  name  of  this  paltry 
betrayer  might  be  made  known,  that  in  it  we  might 
be  supplied  with  a  synonym  for  the  meaner  and 
baser  kinds  of  treachery.  It  would  be  unjust  to  de 
grade  Judas,  or  Arnold,  or  Gorgey,  to  such  com 
panionship  as  this. 

Now,  good  Brother  Jonathan,  can  you  rise  chuck 
ling  from  a  story  like  this  to  hearten  the  Sultan 
against  the  demands  of  Russia  ?  What,  as  Whittier 
has  said  somewhere, 

"  Would  not  the  burning  answer  come 
From  Turbaned  Turk  and  bearded  Russ, 
Go,  free  your  wretched  slaves  at  home, 
Then  turn  and  ask  the  like  of  us  ?  " 

Why,  "  extradition  "  is  only  the  diplomatic  word 
for  what  some  of  our  sister  States  do  every  day  in 
the  week,  for  what  we  consent  to  for  the  sake  of  pre 
serving  the  unity  of  the  great  Whig  or  Democratic 


C  l62  3 

party.  We  cannot  admit  Kossuth  into  our  Valhalla 
and  shut  Toussaint  and  Madison  Washington  out 
of  it. 

This  is  one  great  curse  of  our  system  of  Slavery, 
that  it  compels  our  great  statesmen  into  a  dishonest 
connivance  with  it,  and  keeps  out  of  politics  all  who 
are  too  upright  to  be  accessories  in  such  a  crime.  It 
chills  the  eloquence  of  our  great  orators  with  a  sense 
of  painful  inconsistency.  When  we  read  Webster's 
fine  denunciation  of  Nicholas,  where  he  speaks  like 
a  lawyer  inspired,  we  cannot  help  thinking  of  the 
Capitol  steps  at  Richmond,  and  of  the  schoolmaster 
who  sets  no  disagreeable  lessons.  Too  literally  does 
our  Daniel  come  to  judgment.  Is  that  good  inter 
national  law  between  Russia  and  Turkey  which  is 
bad  between  Virginia  and  Massachusetts  ?  Interna 
tional  law  is  a  good  phrase,  but  what  is  the  worth  of 
international  law  without  an  international  tribunal 
which  can  be  appealed  to  for  its  enforcement?  In 
ternational  law  has  been  of  use  to  diplomatists  some 
times  in  arranging  matters  where  matters  of  dollars 
and  cents  were  concerned,  but  in  questions  of  jus 
tice  it  has  always  been  the  law  of  the  strongest.  Mr. 
Webster  seemed  tacitly  to  acknowledge  that  it  was 
merely  the  public  opinion  of  nations,  and  he  wished 
to  have  the  force  of  this  brought  to  bear  upon  the 
Czar  by  excluding  him  from  the  rights  and  courtesies 


C 

of  the  civilized  world.  This  is  very  well  in  itself, 
but  should  we  wish  to  have  the  same  rule  applied  to 
ourselves  ? 

Even  as  regards  such  of  our  State  Governments 
as  practically  nullify  that  article  of  the  Constitution 
which  requires  the  surrender  of  escaped  slaves,  the 
parallel  with  the  conduct  of  Turkey  is  tolerably 
exact.  They  do  not,  it  is  true,  agree  to  shut  up  the 
fugitives  in  a  fortress  and  keep  them  harmless  for 
life.  But  there  are  dungeons  not  built  with  stone 
and  mortar  as  dark  as  any  in  Turkey.  There  are 
boundaries  harder  to  climb  over  than  fortress  walls, 
and  restraints  as  galling  as  those  of  iron  fetters. 
The  colored  man  in  the  free  States,  whether  a  fugi 
tive  or  not,  finds  the  avenues  to  every  social  and 
political  distinction  shut  fast  against  him.  It  has 
even  been  decided  lately  by  the  Secretary  of  State 
that  he  is  not  a  citizen  of  the  United  States.  The 
Indiana  taker  of  Daguerreotype  likenesses  is  an  or 
nament  of  society  sufficiently  important  to  have  the 
"  aegis  of  the  Union  "  held  over  him  in  case  he 
should  leave  the  country  (as  we  hope  he  may),  but 
Frederick  Douglass  is,  according  to  Mr.  Clayton, 
nothing  at  all.  He  is  neither  denizen,  nor  citizen, 
nor  an  all-other-person-including-Indians-not-taxed. 
He  is  absolutely  and  literally  annihilated.  Verily  we 
must  set  to  work  upon  the  beam  that  is  in  our  own 
eye! 


THE    SOUTH   AS    KING    LOG 


w. 


HEN  King  Log  first  made  his  avatar  among  the 
frogs,  he  invaded  his  future  dominion  with  such  a 
splash  that  even  the  oldest  croakers,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  pollywogs,  fancied  that  his  ligneous  majesty 
was  a  cross-grained  piece  of  Kingship  that  would 
maintain  order  not  without  a  certain  stolid  severity. 
The  deep-voiced  seniors  of  the  swamp  prophesied  of 
a  closer  adherence  to  ancient  wont,  and  of  a  return 
of  those  always  legendary  days  when  age  was  rever 
enced,  experience  valued,  and  religion  cherished. 
Certain  pollywogs,  who  had  not  yet  doffed  their 
tails,  which,  like  Plato's  trails  of  glory,  they  had 
brought  with  them  into  their  amphibious  world,  and 
who  had  formed  an  association  of  young  frogdom 
with  strong  radical  tendencies,  and  a  plan  of  pro 
viding  every  niarish  citizen  with  a  tussock  and  a  lily- 
pad  to  himself,  augured  martial  law  and  the  sup 
pression  of  clubs.  Accordingly,  for  a  day  or  two, 
the  Nestors  chanted  jubilate,  expecting  the  forma 
tion  of  a  cabinet,  and  the  liberals  cast  about  to  find 
a  Brutus,  who  would  solve  all  doubts  by  sudden 


t 

and  secret  thrust  of  bulrush.  Those  of  the  juste 
milieu  were  not  wanting  to  the  occasion,  and,  mount 
ing  as  an  appropriate  rostrum  the  floating  rail  of  a 
fence,  proposed  the  settlement  of  all  difficulties  by  a 
compromise  which  should  satisfy  all  parties  by  yield 
ing  just  what  they  did  not  wish  for  to  each.  Mean 
while  his  royal  woodenness  lay  quiet,  keeping  his 
designs  closely  to  himself.  Vainly  did  choruses  of 
ardent  loyalists  sing  the  new  national  anthem,  God 
save  great  Log  the  First,  every  evening  in  front  of 
the  royal  residence.  At  last  a  committee  of  both 
houses  was  deputed  to  wait  upon  the  King  and  hum 
bly  desire  him  to  summon  a  ministry.  The  address 
was  honored  with  no  sign  of  recognition,  fears  be 
gan  to  be  entertained  that  all  was  not  right,  and  the 
royal  leeches  being  called  in,  gave  a  verdict  of  Coma 
produced  by  a  superabundant  presence  of  sap  in  the 
brain.  Kemedial  measures  were  tried  without  effect, 
the  awe  inspired  by  the  royal  descent  wore  gradu 
ally  off,  the  late  majesty  was  openly  declared  a 
blockhead,  and  his  remains  were  treated  with  down 
right  contumely,  and  Humbug!  resounded  in  all 
varieties  of  intonation  from  one  end  of  marshland 
to  the  other. 

Precisely  such  a  King  Log  is  the  Southern  threat 
of  Disunion,  thrown  down  periodically  to  scare  the 
croakers  in  our  political  morass,  only  this  year  it  has 


C   1663 

descended  with  more  force,  and  the  wake  set  in  mo 
tion  by  the  plunge  has  spread  itself  in  wider  circles. 
The  quarrel  between  the  North  and  the  South  re 
minds  one  of  that  famous  duel  in  the  "  Pickwick 
Papers/'  when  the  antagonists  only  met  as  both  were 
endeavoring  to  escape  a  meeting.  But,  in  the  mean 
time,  the  pretended  fear  of  dissolution  is  to  be  made 
the  fulcrum  upon  which  to  rest  the  lever  of  reac 
tion  against  freedom.  Mr.  Clay  makes  his  third  ap 
pearance  in  his  famous  part  of  Mr.  Facingbothways, 
to  propose  a  middle  course,  which  simply  means  that 
the  North  shall  sit  down,  with  what  grace  it  may, 
between  the  two  stools.  One  would  think  that  two 
experiments  upon  the  hardness  of  the  floor  would 
leave  no  need  for  the  confirmation  of  a  third.  The 
South  has  certainly  by  this  time  squared  all  old 
scores  in  the  way  of  wooden  nutmegs  and  white-oak 
cheeses.  Missouri  and  Texas  were  not  ill  done,  but 
it  will  be  long  ere  the  North  gets  any  spice  out  of 
the  one,  or  any  caseine  out  of  the  other,  though 
there  has  been  grating  enough  and  to  spare.  We 
are  now  to  have  a  wooden  ham  traded  off  upon  us 
in  our  bargain  about  New  Mexico. 

Intimidation  and  wheedling  have  been  mingled  in 
very  adroit  proportion.  First  a  grain  of  dissolution, 
then  a  grain  of  assurance  that  the  Wilmot  Proviso 
is  of  no  practical  importance.  Mr.  Winthrop  writes 


C  1673 

home  that  the  present  Congress  will  outlast  the 
Union,  and  yet  runs  away  from  a  chance  to  vote 
against  a  resolution  whose  passage  is  to  lead  to  an 
immediate  disruption.  "  Under  which  King,  Be- 
zonian  ?  Speak,  or  die !  "  Which  horn  of  his  own 
dilemma  will  Mr.  Winthrop  choose  as  the  most  com 
fortable  to  be  gored  with  ?  Whether  is  Disunion  not 
fraught  with  national  ruin,  or  does  the  Wilmot  Pro 
viso  not  bring  us  in  danger  of  it?  There  is  one 
consolation,  which  is  that  the  memory  of  whosoever 
elects  the  fence  to  sit  on  will  be  retributively  ridden 
upon  the  rail  he  was  so  fond  of  by  Posterity. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  how  diverse  a  morality 
obtains  in  political  matters  from  that  which  governs 
in  the  other  affairs  of  life.  The  editor  of  the  Bos 
ton  "  Daily  Advertiser,"  a  man  universally  respected 
for  private  virtue  and  integrity,  and  whose  word 
would  be  esteemed  solid  as  a  bond  by  any  of  his 
fellow  citizens,  indulges  the  readers  of  his  journal 
with  the  following  odd  Kilkenny-cat-isms  ("  Adver 
tiser  "  of  February  9th)  :  — 

"MR.  ROOT'S  RESOLUTION.  —  Some  newspapers 
and  some  letter  writers  attach  a  degree  of  importance 
to  the  vote  by  which  Mr.  Root's  resolution  was  laid 
on  the  table,  on  Monday,  in  the  House  of  Represen 
tatives,  which  we  cannot  think  it  deserves.  The  reso 
lution  was  a  proposition  to  instruct  a  committee 


C   168  3 

with  regard  to  an  abstract  question,  a  question,  too, 
which  in  more  practical  forms  was  certain  to  come  up 
before  the  House,  and  it  was  laid  aside.  If  by  our 
own  voice  we  could  have  passed  the  resolution,  and 
secured  a  prudent  action  under  it,  that  voice  would 
have  been  given  it,  and  we  can  well  see  why  the 
Massachusetts  members  voted  against  laying  it  upon 
the  table ;  but  we  do  not  see  that  the  result  is  a  very 
important  one,  or  that  the  vote  indicates  in  one  way 
or  the  other  anything  very  definite  with  regard  to 
the  slavery  question. 

"  The  following  was  the  resolution  as  finally 
amended  by  Mr.  Root :  — 

"'Resolved,  That  the  Committee  on  Territories  be 
instructed  to  report  to  the  House,  with  as  little  delay 
as  practicable,  a  bill  or  bills  providing  a  territorial 
government  or  governments  for  all  that  part  of  the 
territory  ceded  to  the  United  States  by  Mexico  by 
the  treaty  of  Guadalupe  Hidalgo,  lying  eastward  of 
California,  and  prohibiting  slavery  therein.' 

"  It  will  be  observed  that  this  is  a  distinct  enun 
ciation,  in  a  disagreeable  form,  of  one  part  of  a 
general  proposition  which  it  is  hoped  may  be  made 
a  subject  of  compromise.  While  other  statesmen  are 
engaged  with  the  whole  subject  in  dispute,  Mr.  Root 
selects  a  part,  and  hurries  in  an  order,  —  not  to  ask 
a  committee  to  consider  the  propriety  of  a  particular 


C  169  3 

course,  but  to  instruct  them  to  report  a  bill,  with  a 
proviso  annexed,  which  proviso  it  is  known  is  ob 
noxious  to  nearly  half  at  least  of  the  members  of  the 
House. 

"All  the  Massachusetts  members  present  voted 
against  laying  the  resolution  upon  the  table,  and  so 
did  right.  But  if  any  of  them  supposed  that  by  its 
passage  the  great  question  of  the  session  was  to  be 
settled,  or  if  Mr.  Boot  thought  that  in  pressing  his 
resolution  he  was  doing  anything  more  than  to  throw 
a  firebrand  into  the  national  councils,  we  mistake 
its  purport,  force,  and  effect." 

This  editorial  comments  sufficiently  upon  itself 
without  any  glasses  of  ours.  A  few  days  later  the 
editor  proposes  that  a  public  meeting  shall  be  held 
in  Boston  to  proclaim  devotion  to  the  Union,  in 
other  words,  to  protest  against  the  Wilmot  Proviso. 

A  few  years  ago,  in  looking  up  the  history  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise,  we  had  occasion  to  refer  to 
the  files  of  the  Boston  "  Repertory,"  edited,  we  be 
lieve,  by  the  same  gentleman  who  now  conducts  the 
"  Advertiser."  We  have  not  those  files  at  hand,  but 
if  we  can  trust  our  recollection,  the  ground  taken 
by  the  "  Repertory  "  was  that  the  admission  of  Mis 
souri  as  a  slave  state  would  add  to  the  already  undue 
preponderancy  of  the  South  in  the  national  politics. 
We  think  the  same  argument  equally  conclusive 


c:  1703 

now  (to  leave  the  higher  ethical  view  out  of  the  ques 
tion)  against  a  Compromise  in  the  case  of  the  terri 
tory  acquired  from  Mexico.  But  this  is  not  the  only, 
or  the  chief,  importance  of  the  Proviso.  Without  it, 
any  of  the  new  states,  though  they  might  enter  the 
Union  with  satisfactory  constitutions,  could  amend 
them  so  as  to  establish  slavery  at  any  moment, 
whereas,  as  long  as  the  Proviso  remained  in  force, 
the  holding  of  a  slave  would  be  illegal,  and  the  mat 
ter  would  be  decided  as  formerly  in  Massachusetts 
by  a  suit  before  the  proper  tribunals. 

Moreover,  when  any  affair,  private  or  public,  is  to 
be  settled,  wisdom  and  justice  are  always  found  to 
be  coincident  at  last.  Righteousness  and  expediency 
turn  out  in  the  end  to  be  identical.  How  lasting 
was  the  truce  patched  up  by  the  Missouri  Compro 
mise  ?  The  admission  of  Texas  with  a  pro-slavery 
Constitution,  did  that  tend  to  allay  the  Anti-slavery 
agitation  ?  It  is  surely  time  that  our  legislators 
should  learn  to  look  forward  beyond  the  limit  of  a 
session  or  a  presidential  term.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
an  apt  compromise  cannot  be  found,  since  between 
right  and  wrong  there  is  no  possibility  of  compro 
mise.  Justice  exacts  her  dues  more  slowly  of  nations 
than  of  individuals,  but  she  always  contrives  to  get 
payment  of  the  uttermost  farthing  from  both. 


COMPROMISE 

JLF  there  were  a  Saint  Compromise,  it  would  be  his 
image  that  ought  to  be  stamped  upon  the  Coins  of 
our  Republic.  Our  very  existence  as  a  Nation  at  all 
is  due,  we  are  told,  to  a  compromise,  and  one  of  a 
somewhat  ignoble  sort,  not  between  God  and  Satan, 
but  between  Trade  and  Slavery.  So  that  Satan  and 
Mammon  were  represented  at  the  formation  of  the 
Compact,  but  not  God.  Since  the  sticking  together 
of  the  Union,  this  patron  Saint  Compromise  has  in 
tervened  on  several  occasions  to  preserve  the  work 
of  his  clients. 

This  patching  up  of  expedients  is  justified  by  a 
system  of  reasoning  falsely  termed  Common  Sense. 
Everything,  they  say,  is  the  result  of  Compromises. 
Conventionalism  is  a  Compromise  between  the  indi 
vidual  and  Society.  Respectability  is  a  Compromise 
between  Virtue  and  Vice.  Nay,  life  itself  is  a  Com 
promise  between  Health  and  Disease.  We  are  taught 
to  believe  that  half  a  loaf  is  not  only  better  than  no 
bread  at  all,  but  better  than  any  amount  of  bread. 

Now  this  is  not  truly  Common  Sense  at  all,  for 


[  172  n 

that  is  the  result  of  experience  and  practical  saga 
city  teaching  the  best  means  of  reaching  a  desired 
point,  not  a  makeshift  for  getting  half  way  to  it. 
Facts  are  things  to  which  we  must  all  make  up  our 
minds,  however  distasteful  they  may  be  to  us.  No 
matter  what  our  own  hurry  must  be,  we  must  con 
sent  that  Destiny  shall  not  make  advances  per  saltum, 
but  with  an  almost  inappreciable  slowness.  The 
most  vehement  Reformer  must  endure  that  his  very 
existence  shall  depend  upon  that  of  his  opposite 
pole,  the  unyielding  Conservative.  We  must  either 
get  out  of  the  way  of  facts  or  be  run  over  by  them, 
like  the  old  philosopher  who  denied  the  existence 
of  matter. 

One  of  these  tough  facts  is  the  presence  and  force 
of  Evil,  Unwisdom,  Satan,  or  whatever  we  choose  to 
call  it,  in  human  affairs.  We  may  say  what  we 
please,  there  it  is,  and  we  must  make  the  best  of  it. 
A  great  part  of  valuable  human  activity  is  wasted  in 
the  futile  work  of  building  barriers  against  the  In 
evitable.  This,  then,  is  the  true  problem  —  to  find 
out  what  the  Inevitable  is.  It  is  inevitable  that 
when  two  forces  join  at  an  angle,  a  new  direction  is 
generated  proportioned  to  the  relative  quantities  of 
force.  And  this  is  the  truth  on  which  is  based  the 
fallacy  that  Compromise  is  the  dictate  of  Common 
Sense.  Practical  wisdom,  it  is  said,  lies  in  the  nat- 


C  178  ] 

ural  ground,  the  balance  between  opposite  poles. 
In  spite  of  this,  nevertheless,  all  that  mankind  has 
ever  recognized  as  uncommon  sense  has  been  that 
which  has  come  bluntly  and  face  to  face  against 
whatever  was  established  theory  or  usage. 

The  difficulty  is  that  all  our  Compromises  have  been 
no  compromises  at  all,  at  least  in  this  sense.  They 
have  rather  realized  the  old  meaning  of  the  word, 
which  implied  a  Conspiracy.  They  have  not  been 
modifications  springing  from  a  meeting  of  the  two 
antagonistic  principles  of  Good  and  Evil,  but  Con 
spiracies  by  which  Good  has  been  uniformly  be 
trayed.  In  the  great  game  which  began  with  the 
birth  of  the  Constitution,  Slavery  has  all  along 
played  with  loaded  Dice.  She  has  put  on  the  mask 
of  Destiny,  and  acted  the  part  so  well  that  our 
Statesmen  have  always  taken  defeat  for  granted  be 
forehand. 

Slavery,  being  an  acknowledged  evil,  the  very 
permission  to  exist  was  at  first  a  concession  and  a 
surrender.  This  was  called  a  Compromise.  Then 
Slavery  desired  to  extend  itself  and  treachery  al 
lowed  it.  This  was  called  a  Compromise.  Again  the 
monster  felt  the  pains  of  hunger,  and  Texas  was 
thrown  to  it.  This  was  called  a  Compromise.  Now, 
affairs  have  thriven  so  well  that  Freedom  sits  an 
outcast  and  a  beggar  at  the  gates  of  her  own  an- 


C   174  3 

cestral  dwelling.  And  this  is  also  called  a  Compro 
mise.  Better  strangle  at  once  that  "  bird  of  our 
Country  "  of  which  our  orators  are  so  fond  of  talk 
ing,  than  let  her  go  on  hatching  eggs  of  all  manner 
of  unclean  birds. 

It  is  hardly  a  year  since  the  Northern  Whig 
presses  were  vying  with  each  other  in  their  zeal  for 
the  Wilmot  Proviso.  The  universal  Whig  Dough  of 
the  Country,  fermenting  with  the  yeast  of  an  ex 
pected  victory,  forgot  for  a  moment  that  it  was 
Dough.  Nothing  was  too  bad  for  that  sour  and 
heavy  Democratic  batch  which  could  not  rise.  Now 
that  aspiring  Dough  is  flat  and  lifeless.  Even  Gen 
eral  Taylor  ivas  in  favor  of  the  Proviso,  and  North 
ern  Whigs  were  seduced  to  vote  for  him  upon  that 
pretence.  Let  a  man  cheat  his  neighbor  out  of  a  few 
hundred  dollars  and  he  goes  to  the  State  Prison. 
But  to  what  Penitentiary  of  public  contempt  shall  a 
Party  be  consigned,  which  obtains  a  President  under 
false  pretences  ?  When  the  eye  of  the  People  be 
comes  clairvoyant,  it  will  behold,  we  fancy,  certain 
unconscious  gentlemen  working  in  Congressional 
Committees,  clad  in  symbolic  suits  of  blue  and  red 
perpendicularly  halved,  such  as  are  the  uniforms  in 
some  other  public  institutions. 

The  Wilmot  Proviso  was  truly  a  Compromise.  It 
allowed  the  South  to  keep  all  that  it  had  hitherto 


C 

unjustly  gained,  but  declared  that  it  should  steal  no 
more.  Our  statesmanship,  which  has  brought  itself 
more  and  more  into  accordance  with  that  of  Europe, 
was  desirous  of  reproducing  an  American  type  of 
that  greatest  of  Old  World  humbugs,  the  Balance 
of  Power.  Accordingly,  we  are  now  told  that  the 
beam  must  be  kept  exactly  even  between  the  Free 
and  the  Slave  States,  in  other  words,  that  when  we 
make  a  hole  for  our  great  cat  to  go  through,  we 
must  also  make  a  still  greater  for  the  little  cat  not 
yet  littered. 

All  history  is  the  record  of  a  struggle,  gradually 
heightening  in  fierceness,  between  reason  and  un 
reason,  between  right  and  wrong.  Of  what  good  is 
it  that  we  can  put  off  the  evil  time  a  century,  which 
is  but  a  day  in  the  history  of  the  human  race  ?  Our 
statutes  are  subject  to  revision  in  that  higher  Con 
gress  where  the  laws  of  Nature  are  enacted.  "  Trent 
shall  not  wind  him  with  so  deep  indent,"  exclaim 
our  Glendowers.  "  He  must,  he  will,  you  see  he 
doth,"  answers  the  progress  of  events.  This  very 
neutral  ground  of  Compromise  is  that  which  is 
trampled  at  last  by  the  Contending  Forces  of  the 
good  and  evil  principle.  Our  legislators  might  as 
well  try  to  stay  Niagara  with  a  dip-net,  or  pass  acts 
against  the  law  of  gravitation,  as  endeavor  to  stunt 
the  growth  of  avenging  Conscience.  Do  they  think 


C  *76  3 

that  the  Union  can  be  stuck  together  with  mouth- 
glue,  when  the  eternal  forces  are  rending  it  asunder  ? 
There  is  something  better  than  Expediency,  and 
that  is  Wisdom,  something  stronger  than  Compro 
mise,  and  that  is  Justice. 


MR.    WEBSTER'S    SPEECH 

JLF  there  were  a  Pepys  now  living  in  Boston  and 
snapping  up  for  his  diary  all  those  unconsidered 
trifles  of  street  and  personal  news  which  do  not  get 
into  print,  but  which  nevertheless  make  History,  he 
would  record  a  great  many  facts  that  would  give 
clews  to  the  investigations  of  the  future  annalist. 
He  would  note  down  that  Mr.  Webster  received  the 
cue  for  his  extraordinary  speech  from  a  private 
meeting  called  together  by  certain  gentlemen  to 
concoct  reaction  against  the  Anti-slavery  movement 
in  particular,  and  to  screw  down  the  brakes  upon 
the  too  rapid  progress  of  Destiny  in  general.  He 
would  state,  that,  as  the  defection  of  Gorgey  was 
talked  of  in  London  before  it  took  place  in  Hun 
gary,  so  that  of  Mr.  Webster  was  counted  on  in 
State  Street  while  the  Honorable  Senator  himself 
was  innocently  writing  home  to  his  friends  to  inquire 
how  strong  a  form  of  Anti-slavery  the  Massachusetts 
stomach  would  bear.  He  would  state  as  a  certainty 
that  the  passage  in  Mr.  Webster's  speech  relating 
to  Mr.  Hoar's  mission  was  not  delivered  in  the  Sen- 


n  178  ] 

ate,  but  was  an  after-thought  sent  on  for  insertion 
in  the  Boston  edition. 

So  much  by  way  of  previous  history.  Now  in  re 
gard  to  the  speech  itself.  It  has  been  characterized, 
like  most  of  Mr.  Webster's  speeches,  as  "  a  masterly 
effort."  Some  of  them  have  been  masterly  suc 
cesses,  but  this,  we  sincerely  hope  and  believe,  was 
an  effort.  We  think  we  notice  in  the  course  of  it 
one  or  two  scarce-concealed  gulps,  as  the  Oregon 
speech  was  swallowed.  And  it  was,  moreover,  the 
effort,  not  of  a  Senator  representing  Massachusetts, 
but  of  an  advocate  holding  the  brief  of  State  Street. 
It  is  a  matter  of  debate  in  the  newspapers  whether 
or  no  Mr.  Webster  is  sustained  by  the  public  senti 
ment  of  Boston.  It  seems  to  be  forgotten  that  the 
distinguished  Senator  represents  an  undivided  half 
of  the  Bay  State.  He  has  remembered  that  he  was 
the  delegate  of  Boston,  but  has  apparently  forgotten 
that  Bunker  Hill  and  Concord  have  also  their  share 
in  him  ;  nay,  it  seems  to  have  slipped  from  his  mind 
that  he  represented  Daniel  Webster  the  man  no  less 
than  Daniel  Webster  the  aspirant  for  the  Presidency. 

We  have  touched  upon  the  first  great  objection 
to  the  speech,  and  it  is  a  fatal  one.  It  is  the  plea  of 
a  lawyer  and  an  advocate,  but  not  of  a  statesman. 
It  is  not  even  the  plea  of  an  advocate  on  the  side 
which  he  was  retained  to  argue.  We  have  heard 


C  179  ] 

enough  of  Democratic  defalcations ;  here  is  a  great 
Whig  defalcation  which  dwarfs  them  all,  for  it  is 
not  money  which  has  disappeared  in  this  instance, 
but  professions,  pledges,  principles.  Men  do  not  de 
fend  themselves  in  advance  against  accusations  of 
inconsistency,  unless  they  feel  an  uncomfortable 
sense  that  there  is  some  justice  in  the  charge.  This 
feeling  pervades  a  greater  part  of  Mr.  Webster's 
speech  like  a  blush.  While  Mr.  Webster's  private 
correspondents  in  Boston  were  spreading  the  trem 
ulous  intelligence,  not  without  due  awe  of  the  result, 
that  he  was  about  to  swoop 

"  Like  an  eagle, 
And  bolt  his  cloudless  thunder  on  the  heads  " 

of  Southern  cacklers,  behold,  he  quietly  descends 
and  takes  his  perch  beside  them  on  the  roost  like 
any  tame  villatic  fowl. 

Mr.  Webster  begins  by  what  may  be  considered 
an  apology  for  Slavery  in  the  abstract,  as  it  is  called, 
although  we  must  confess  that  after  diligent  inquiry, 
we  have  been  unable  to  discover  where  that  particu 
lar  kind  of  servitude  exists  now,  or  has  ever  existed. 
We  do  not  exactly  see  what  Greek,  Roman,  or  Jew 
ish  Slavery  has  to  do  with  the  Wilmot  Proviso,  but 
as  Mr.  Webster  has  seen  fit  to  bring  them  in,  it  may 
be  worth  while  to  set  him  right  in  his  facts.  It  was 
not  "  the  ingenious  philosophy  of  the  Greeks  which 


C 

found,  or  sought  to  find,  a  justification  for  it  (Slav 
ery)  precisely  upon  the  grounds  which  have  been 
assumed  for  such  a  justification  in  this  country ; 
that  is,  a  natural  and  original  difference  among  the 
races  of  mankind,  the  inferiority  of  the  black  or 
colored  races  to  the  white."  It  was  simply  an  ingen 
ious  philosopher  among  the  Greeks,  Aristotle,  who 
did  so;  and  he,  like  the  rest  of  his  countrymen  and 
like  the  Chinese  of  the  present  day,  considered  all 
foreigners  as  barbarians,  drawing  quite  another  line 
between  those  fit  and  those  unfit  for  Slavery  than 
that  of  color.  Plato  in  his  Republic  makes  a  distinc 
tion  only  in  favor  of  the  non-enslavement  of  Greeks. 
There  is  proof  enough  of  the  fact  that  the  Greeks 
did  not  consider  intellectual  inferiority  to  be  gradu 
ated  by  the  chromatic  scale  of  complexion.  Does 
Herodotus  paint  the  Egyptians  as  ourang-outangs — 
a  race  which  the  profoundest  ethnologists  consider 
to  have  been  of  the  Negro  type  ?  And  for  what  did 
Pythagoras  visit  India,  and  Plato  Egypt  ?  The 
greater  part  of  the  slaves  in  Greece,  who  were  not 
subjugated  natives  like  the  helots  in  Sparta,  came 
from  Asia  Minor.  While  the  Greek  republics  were 
mere  clans  of  squabbling  savages,  there  were  dark- 
skinned  empires  upon  the  Nile,  from  the  dregs  of 
whose  philosophy  and  religion  the  Greeks  drank  and 
were  inspired.  Mr.  Webster  says  that  he  "  sup- 


C  l81  3 

poses  "  (for  in  this  speech  every  phrase  seems  to  sit 
upon  the  fence)  that  no  injunction  against  the  insti 
tution  of  Slavery  is  to  be  found  in  the  "  teachings 
of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  or  of  any  of  his  apos 
tles."  We  will  not  stop  to  inquire  what  the  Gospel 
of  Christ,  in  contradistinction  to  that  of  his  apostles, 
may  be,  but  only  ask  if  incest  is  anywhere  forbidden 
in  the  New  Testament?  Or,  if  not,  whether  that 
want  of  express  prohibition  be  in  any  sort  an  excuse 
for  the  crime  ?  Punch,  says  the  Newgate  Ordinary, 
is  nowhere  spoken  ill  of  in  Scripture. 

In  order  to  appreciate  fully  the  fallacies  of  the 
speech,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  constantly  that  it 
is  not  a  discourse  upon  the  question  of  Slavery,  but 
an  argument  against  the  application  of  the  Wilmot 
Proviso  to  New  Mexico  and  California.  Now  what 
has  all  this  stuff  about  Greek  and  Roman  Slavery, 
and  nowhere  forbidden  in  the  Gospels,  to  do  with 
this  question  ?  Nothing  whatever,  except  to  serve 
as  a  lenitive  to  the  public  conscience,  that  it  may  re 
lax  a  little  in  its  anxiety  concerning  the  smuggling 
of  human  bondage  with  all  its  concomitant  horrors 
into  the  New  Territory.  There  is  no  doubt,  however, 
in  point  of  fact,  that  the  early  Christians  discoun 
tenanced  Slavery,  as  they  did  also  war.  One  of  the 
Fathers,  indeed,  expressly  condemns  it.  But  if  the 
practice  of  the  Church  were  in  its  favor,  what  then  ? 


C   182  ] 

The  Church  countenanced  many  practices  which 
would  not  be  tolerated  now.  The  first  Council  of 
Toledo  (A.  D.  400)  permitted  the  keeping  of  concu 
bines,  and  every  one  knows  for  what,  in  later  times, 
the  clergy  paid  the  tax  of  couillage.  Perhaps  it  is 
more  to  the  purpose,  as  concerns  Mr.  Webster  the 
lawyer,  to  allude  to  the  fact  that  the  extinction  of 
serfage  in  England  was  due  to  the  boldness  and  per 
severance  with  which  the  lawyers  insisted  on  having 
the  laws  so  construed  as  to  favor  liberty.  But,  if 
Mr.  Webster  were  really  in  search  of  a  scriptural 
prohibition  of  Slavery,  we  think  he  might  find  it  in 
that  commandment  which  forbids  us  to  covet  any 
thing  that  is  our  neighbor's.  For,  if  we  may  not  do 
that,  then  a  fortiori  we  may  not  covet  our  neigh 
bor  himself. 

Mr.  Webster,  having  endeavored  to  make  Slav 
ery  a  little  less  odious  by  showing  that  it  existed 
among  two  pagan  nations,  and  among  the  Jews,  a 
race  notoriously  blind  to  the  spiritual  aspect  of  the 
Law  whereof  they  were  depositaries,  goes  on  to  say 
that  honest  differences  of  opinion  exist  at  the  North 
and  the  South  upon  this  subject.  One  might  have 
expected  here  some  cursory  glance  at  the  moral  side 
of  the  question,  which  has,  as  we  shall  see  presently, 
a  decided  bearing  even  upon  his  own  view  of  the 
case.  But  it  is  precisely  this  ethical  part  of  the 


C  183  3 

argument  which  Mr.  Webster  is  anxious  to  keep  out 
of  sight,  or,  if  it  will  suggest  itself,  to  depreciate. 
He  merely  alludes  to  the  fact  that  there  are  such 
diversities  of  sentiment,  and  then  goes  on  to  ridicule 
Northern  "fanaticism"  without  an  allusion  to  its 
antagonist  principle  at  the  South.  He  says  of  them 
that  "  they  deal  with  morals  as  with  mathematics, 
and  they  think  what  is  right  may  be  distinguished 
from  what  is  wrong  with  the  precision  of  an  alge 
braic  equation."  We  confess  that  with  regard  to 
our  treatment  of  those  who  practice  what  we  con 
sider  sinful,  it  is  a  very  hard  thing  for  us  to  define 
the  precise  point  where  charity  ends  and  connivance 
and  complicity  begin.  But  we  should  like  to  know 
how  many  of  the  religious  sects  in  this  country  be 
lieve  that  ignorance  of  the  moral  excuses  the  trans 
gressor  any  more  than  ignorance  of  the  laws  of  the 
land  ?  Mr.  Webster  says,  "  if  their  perspicacious  vi 
sion  enables  them  to  detect  a  spot  on  the  face  of  the 
sun,  they  think  that  a  good  reason  why  the  sun  should 
be  struck  down  from  heaven."  This  is  simply  non 
sense,  besides  being  a  very  faulty  comparison.  For 
no  vision,  however  perspicacious,  can  detect  spots 
in  the  sun,  and  none  but  an  insane  man  would  wish 
to  destroy  the  sun,  even  if  he  could  detect  such  spots, 
because  everybody  who  is  not  stark  mad  knows 
that  we  have  no  control  over  the  sun  whatever.  But 


C 

surely  if  there  were  a  gas-lamp  in  front  of  a  man's 
door,  and  the  glass  were  so  foul  that  it  gave  no 
light,  he  might  very  reasonably  desire  to  have  it 
washed.  The  Constitution  is  a  thing  subject,  under 
certain  conditions,  to  the  reforming  will  of  the 
people.  He  says  that  "  they  (the  '  fanatics '  afore 
said)  forget  how  many  vices  and  crimes,  public  and 
private,  still  prevail  and  that  many  of  them,  public 
crimes  especially,  which  are  offences  against  the 
Christian  religion,  pass  without  exciting  particular 
regret  or  indignation."  Nothing  can  be  more  ab 
surdly  untrue  than  this.  Mr.  Webster,  before  un 
dertaking  to  make  a  speech,  was  bound  to  master 
his  subject.  In  debating  this  question,  nothing  could 
be  of  more  importance  than  an  accurate  understand 
ing  of  the  sentiment  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of 
Northern  Anti-slavery.  Of  all  men  in  the  com 
munity  the  Abolitionists  are  the  least  oblivious  of 
these  things  which  Mr.  Webster  says  they  forget. 
Mr.  Webster  would  probably  be  surprised  to  know 
that,  if  his  argument  in  regard  to  our  Constitutional 
obligations  have  any  cogency  at  all,  it  will  be  espe 
cially  pleasing  to  the  most  ultra  of  these  Northern 
fanatics,  the  Disunionists,  who  have  long  insisted 
upon  the  necessity  of  being  limited  to  a  precisely 
similar  view. 

Mr.  Webster  next  traces  the  growth  of  Slavery 


C  185  3 

(in  itself  an  entirely  sufficient  argument  for  the 
enactment  of  the  Proviso)  and  proceeds  to  give  the 
history  of  the  annexation  of  Texas.  We  shall  con 
sider  this,  and  what  he  says  about  Mr.  Mason's  bill, 
together,  because  his  argument  on  both  cases  hinges 
upon  the  due  performance  of  a  contract.  But  first 
a  word  in  regard  to  Mr.  Webster's  personal  attitude 
toward  annexation.  If  Abolitionists  forget  certain 
things,  as  he  affirms  that  they  do,  there  are  others 
of  which  their  memory  is  uncomfortably  tenacious, 
and  in  regard  to  which  they  might  jog  Mr.  Web 
ster's  own  recollection,  which  seems  to  be  a  little 
drowsy.  Who  was  it  that  asserted  the  annexation  of 
Texas  under  any  circumstances  to  be  unconstitu 
tional?  And  how  is  that  constitutional  in  1850 
which  was  not  so  in  1845  ?  Mr.  Webster  says  that 
he  "went  home  to  Massachusetts  and  proclaimed 
the  existence  of  this  purpose  (annexation),  but  I 
could  get  no  audience,  and  but  little  attention."  A 
contribution  to  history  as  valuable  and  authentic  as 
any  of  Bishop  Turpin  !  There  was  a  distinguished 
gentleman  of  Massachusetts  who  promised  to  attend 
a  certain  Convention  in  Faneuil  Hall,  whither  the 
announcement  of  his  speaking  on  a  particular  sub 
ject  would  have  summoned  the  largest  audience  ever 
assembled  there,  but  who  was  summoned  away  sud 
denly  to  New  York.  Can  Mr.  Webster  remember 
how  he  was  ? 


C 

When  we  come  to  the  question  of  the  perform 
ance  of  a  contract,  it  becomes  plain  why  the  speaker 
has  avoided  all  allusion  to  the  ethics  of  the  matter. 
Or,  it  may  be,  that,  as  is  often  the  case  with  law 
yers,  the  nearer  and  lower  duty  occults  the  farther 
and  greater.  If  the  Constitution  be  a  contract  be 
tween  the  North  and  the  South,  and  if  the  legisla 
tive  provision  for  making  four  new  slave  States  out 
of  Texas  be  so  also,  then  we  suppose  these  con 
tracts  are  to  be  governed  by  the  same  rules  which 
prescribe  the  duties  of  individuals  in  similar  cases. 
Now,  if  there  were  an  express  understanding  to  a 
certain  effect  between  the  contracting  parties,  certi 
fied  by  abundant  witnesses,  that  understanding  would 
surely  be  held  to  modify  the  obligations  of  the  con 
tract.  Now  there  was  an  understanding,  as  Mr. 
Webster  himself  states  correctly,  at  the  time  of  the 
adoption  of  the  Constitution,  that  Slavery  would  be 
extinguished  by  the  suppression  of  the  slave-trade. 
This  is  all  that  gives  any  meaning  whatever  to  Mr. 
Madison's  objection  to  the  insertion  of  the  word 
"  slave "  in  the  Constitution.  But,  above  and  be 
yond  this,  every  contract  to  do  an  immoral  act  is 
void  db  initio.  The  return  of  fugitives  is  clearly  an 
immoral  act  by  the  showing  of  that  very  Gospel 
which  Mr.  Webster  admits  to  be  an  authority  when 
he  intimates  that  it  nowhere  condemns  Slavery.  But 


C  18?  3 

Mr.  Webster,  while  he  would  enforce  the  perform 
ance,  by  the  North,  of  the  contracts  as  respects 
Texas  and  the  return  of  fugitives,  says  not  a  word 
of  Southern  duties  and  obligations.  Not  one  word, 
for  the  passage  in  his  speech  which  refers  to  the  im 
prisonment  of  free  colored  seamen  was  not  spoken 
in  the  Senate,  but  sent  on  to  be  inserted  in  the  Bos 
ton  edition  of  his  speech.  Was  it  a  Senator  from 
South  Carolina,  or  from  Massachusetts,  who  was 
speaking?  Surely  a  lower  bid  for  the  Presidency 
has  never  been  made  than  this. 

But  how  is  it  about  the  Wilmot  Proviso?  Mr. 
Webster  has  two  reasons  to  assign  against  its  pass 
age.  One  is  that  it  is  useless,  and  the  other  that  it 
is  irritating  to  the  South.  If  it  be  useless,  why  was 
our  advocate  in  favor  of  it  in  the  case  of  Oregon  ? 
Why  did  he  claim  such  a  mere  ~brutum  fulmen  as 
"  his  thunder "  ?  An  inaccuracy  in  fact,  by  the 
way,  like  his  "  proclaiming  "  in  1843  the  design  to 
annex  Texas.  Why,  the  Abolitionists  had  already 
bored  the  community  to  death  with  it.  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  had  " proclaimed"  it  years  before,  and  John 
Quincy  Adams.  But  who  knows  that  the  Proviso  is 
useless  ?  Mr.  Webster  says  that  it  is,  and  that  Slav 
ery  is  excluded  from  New  Mexico  by  the  law  of 
nature  and  of  physical  geography.  Excellent  good 
words,  but  where  is  the  proof?  Why,  it  is  Mr. 


C   1883 

Webster's  opinion.  But  Mr.  Webster  has  held  opin 
ions  against  the  Tariff  and  in  favor  of  the  Tariff,  in 
favor  of  the  Wilmot  Proviso  and  against  it.  If  Slav 
ery  should  get  into  New  Mexico  (and  let  us  remem 
ber  that  it  has  been  asserted  all  along  by  the  South 
ern  men  in  Congress  that  it  would  have  got  into 
California  but  for  the  fear  of  the  Proviso),  it  would 
be  no  particular  satisfaction  to  be  told  that  Mr. 
Webster  thought  it  never  could.  Mr.  Webster  would 
not,  he  says,  reenact  the  laws  of  God.  Why,  all 
human  laws  are  an  attempt  at  that  very  thing.  It  is 
just  in  proportion  as  the  laws  of  society  or  of  the 
State  diverge  from  that  intention  that  confusion  and 
anarchy  are  produced. 

The  use  of  the  Proviso  is  to  set  a  definite  limit  to 
the  Extension  of  Slavery,  to  put  upon  record  the 
will  of  the  People  that  they  must  have  no  more  of 
it.  Mr.  Webster's  argument,  or  rather  assertion, 
that  the  laws  of  nature  and  God  will  keep  Slavery 
out  of  New  Mexico  is  puerile.  Slavery  everywhere 
exists  in  spite  of  those  laws,  not  in  accordance  with 
them.  Mr.  Calhoun's  plea  in  defence  of  Slavery 
rests  not  upon  any  assumption  that  cotton  could 
not  be  cultivated  as  well  by  black  freemen  as  by 
black  slaves.  Quite  otherwise;  he  would  maintain 
the  institution  because  it  fosters  pride,  the  habit  of 
command,  a  state  of  aristocracy,  and  other  such 


C  189  ]] 

Christian  virtues.  Mr.  Webster  is  scrupulous  about 
reenacting  the  laws  of  God,  and  we  wish  he  had 
felt  as  much  delicacy  about  those  of  Satan. 

Mr.  Webster,  we  have  said,  avoids  carefully  all  the 
moral  points  of  the  argument.  He  falls  in  with  the 
common  assumption  that  this  is  a  question  of  politi 
cal  preponderance  between  the  North  and  the  South. 
Nay,  he  goes  even  farther  and  would  reduce  it  to 
a  mere  matter  of  sectional  prejudice,  the  result 
of  habit  and  education.  Had  it  been  a  question  of 
political  supremacy,  it  would  have  been  no  disgrace 
to  Mr.  Webster  to  have  remembered  that  he  came 
from  the  North.  Had  it  been  a  matter  of  prejudice, 
it  would  not  have  lessened  his  repute  for  wisdom  if 
he  had  retained  some  prepossession  in  favor  of  free 
dom.  Had  the  North  been  as  faithfully  and  ener 
getically  represented  at  Washington  as  the  South 
has  been,  the  limit  would  have  been  set,  and  quietly 
set,  to  the  extension  of  Slavery  long  ago.  But  it  is 
not  a  question  between  the  North  and  the  South.  It 
is  a  struggle  between  the  South  (we  had  almost  said 
Calhoun)  and  the  spirit  of  the  Nineteenth  Century 
after  Christ.  But  Mr.  Webster  would  not  press  the 
Wilmot  Proviso  lest  it  irritate  the  South.  Was  he 
equally  considerate  when  South  Carolina  nullified 
on  account  of  the  Tariff  ?  Is  Slavery  the  only  thing 
whose  sensitiveness  is  to  be  respected  ?  Freedom  has 


C 

been  thought  by  some  to  have  her  finer  feelings  also. 
Did  Mr.  Calhoun  stop  to  inquire  whether  Freedom 
had  a  system  of  nerves  when  he  introduced  resolu 
tions  prohibiting  the  employment  of  free  colored 
men  in  the  national  vessels?  Mr.  Webster  might 
have  remembered  that  a  Senator  represents  fidelity, 
justice,  probity,  honor,  no  less  than  the  mercantile 
and  manufacturing  interests.  He  should  have  con 
sidered  that  the  duty  of  a  Statesman  lies  in  pre 
paring  his  age  and  his  country  for  the  inevitable 
progress  of  events,  not  in  contriving  expedients  for 
putting  it  off  from  day  to  day,  renewing,  as  it  were, 
with  a  constant  accumulation  of  interest  the  pledges 
we  have  given  to  Fate,  and  crowding  back  into  a 
deluge  by  an  exaggeration  of  petty  obstacles  that 
current  of  events  which  might  otherwise  have  flowed 
full,  indeed,  but  still  between  the  banks  of  recog 
nized  order. 

It  is  of  the  first  importance  that  the  mind  of  the 
country  should  be  cleared  of  this  confusion  of  the 
two  terms  South  and  Slavery.  If  we  may  believe 
Mr.  Calhoun,  it  is  the  South  which  has  all  along 
been  a  sufferer  by  the  legislation  of  the  country. 
The  system  of  aggression,  he  says,  began  under  the 
Confederation,  and  has  continued  to  the  present  day. 
There  has  never  been  a  time  when  Slavery  has  not 
been  the  governing  interest  (we  should  rather  say 


c 

disaster)  of  the  Union.  The  exclusion  of  Slavery 
from  the  North  Western  territory,  or  from  any 
other  territory,  is  no  wrong  done  to  the  South,  but 
only  a  preservation  of  equality  between  her  and  the 
North.  The  admission  of  Slavery  would  have  been 
an  entire  exclusion  of  the  North.  But,  admitting 
for  the  purpose  of  the  argument,  Mr.  Clay's  doctrine 
that  what  the  law  makes  property  is  property,  the 
Wilmot  Proviso  merely  leaves  matters  even  between 
the  two  sections.  The  slaveholder  may  turn  his 
"  property  "  into  money  before  emigrating  to  Cali 
fornia  or  New  Mexico,  just  as  the  Northern  freeman 
is  obliged  to  do  with  his.  But  Slavery  prohibits  the 
entrance  of  that  kind  of  capital  which  makes  the 
true  riches  of  a  State,  freemen,  the  masters  only  of 
strong  arms  and  skilful  hands. 

We  may  as  well  correct  another  of  Mr.  Webster's 
mistakes  or  perversions  of  fact  before  we  close  our 
article.  As  if  to  make  his  speech  a  perfect  cabinet 
of  cant,  he  has  a  specimen  of  that  sort  which  attrib 
utes  to  the  Abolitionists  the  cessation  of  all  freedom 
of  speech  at  the  South  in  regard  to  the  evils  of  Slav 
ery.  He  refers  in  confirmation  of  this  absurdity  to 
the  Virginia  Convention  of  1832  and  the  denuncia 
tions  of  Slavery  by  several  distinguished  delegates  to 
it.  Then  he  tells  us  that  the  Anti-slavery  agitation 
commenced  in  1835,  and  wishes  to  know  whether 


C  !92  !3 

any  one  can  speak  as  freely  in  the  Old  Dominion 
now.  If  Mr.  Webster  should  ever  chance  to  see  a 
file  of  "  The  Liberator,"  he  would  find  the  imprint  of 
the  first  number  bearing  the  date  of  January  1, 1831, 
and  the  "  Genius  of  Universal  Emancipation  "  had 
been  previously  published  for  several  years  in  Wash 
ington  and  Baltimore.  The  truth  is  that  Slavebreed- 
ing  is  more  profitable,  and  therefore  more  orthodox, 
in  Virginia  now  than  then.  Mr.  Webster  might 
have  obtained  this  information  from  that  very  paper 
of  Mr.  Upshur's  which  he  refers  to.  To  every  think 
ing  man  it  must  be  apparent  that  an  increase  of 
severity  and  watchfulness  from  year  to  year  is  an 
essential  incident  of  the  slave-system.  As  numbers 
increase,  as  hope,  desire,  and  intelligence  are  inde 
finably  diffused  as  by  the  atmosphere  of  the  time, 
tyranny  must  grow  ever  more  suspicious  and  more 
alert.  If  Slavery  were  as  unprofitable  to  slaveholders 
individually  as  it  is  to  the  States  in  which  it  exists, 
not  all  the  fanaticism  of  all  the  Abolitionists  would 
suffice  to  keep  down  discussion.  There  is  a  Yankee 
proverb  about  people  who  bite  off  their  noses  to 
spite  their  faces,  but  this  kind  of  amusement  is  too 
expensive  for  a  continuance.  Slavery  is  profitable 
to  slaveholders  in  many  ways,  but  especially  as  it 
has  enabled  them  to  maintain  that  political  suprem 
acy  which  Mr.  Webster  is  willing  to  extend  and 


C   193  3 

strengthen.  It  would  have  been  as  well  for  him  to 
have  awakened  earlier  to  the  evils  of  the  exaspera 
tion  springing  from  those  insults  to  which  one  sec 
tion  of  the  country  is  subjected  by  another.  He 
tells  us  that  there  are  complaints  of  the  North  against 
the  South,  but  that  he  "  need  not  go  over  them  par 
ticularly."  Why  not?  What  else  was  he  sent  there 
for?  Does  he  sit  in  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States  to  defend  Massachusetts  from  insult  and  her 
citizens  from  outrage,  or  to  look  out  for  the  Pre 
sidential  chances  of  Daniel  Webster?  If  it  be  an 
insult  to  the  South  to  have  Slavery  excluded  from 
New  Mexico,  why  was  it  not  an  insult  to  the  North 
to  have  Freedom  forever  forbidden  to  enter  Texas  ? 
It  is  said  that  Mr.  Webster's  speech  is  sustained 
by  the  public  sentiment  of  Boston,  and  we  believe 
it.  It  is  sustained  by  numbers  who  have  always 
wished  to  say  the  same  thing,  but  have  never  dared 
to.  When  a  struggle  like  the  one  now  going  on 
rends  and  rifts  the  foundations  of  political  parties, 
dormant  old  fogies  are  wakened  and  brought  to  light, 
with  ideas  and  principles  as  naturally  antediluvian 
as  those  of  toads  split  out  of  granite.  But  Mr.  Web 
ster  is  not  sustained  by  Massachusetts.  There  are 
some  who  really  believed  the  professions  of  the 
Whig  leaders  and  that  the  Wilmot  Proviso  would 
be  safe  in  the  keeping  of  their  party.  Safe  as  free- 
VOL.  n. 


C 

dom  in  the  keeping  of  Austria,  as  a  younger  brother 
in  the  guardianship  of  the  Grand  Turk ! 

If  Mr.  Webster's  speech  should  not  find  any  one 
to  confute  it  in  the  Senate  —  a  hard  task,  for  as 
sumptions  and  tergiversations  are  not  easily  replied 
to  —  it  will  not  be  without  answerers  abundant  and 
conclusive.  It  will  be  answered  by  every  generous 
instinct  of  the  human  heart,  by  every  principle 
which  a  New  Englander  has  imbibed  in  the  Church, 
the  Schoolhouse,  or  the  Home,  but  especially  by 
those  inextinguishable  sentiments  which  move  men's 
hatred  of  treachery  and  contempt  for  the  traitor. 


ANOTHER    WORD    ON    MR.    WEB- 
STER'S   SPEECH 

_1_N  the  comments  which  we  made  a  fortnight  ago 
upon  Mr.  Webster's  speech,  we  dwelt  not  upon  his 
inconsistencies  with  himself,  but  upon  his  inconsist 
encies  with  truth.  We  should  have  felt  no  regret  at 
his  contradicting  himself,  if  he  would  have  done  it  in 
the  manner  which  he  seems  to  think  so  ludicrous  in 
Senators  Dix  and  Niles.  There  is  a  kind  of  incon 
sistency  over  which,  we  are  told,  there  is  joy  in  Heaven. 
We  doubted  the  accuracy  of  Mr.  Webster's  state 
ment  with  regard  to  the  ground  on  which  the  Greek 
Philosophers  defended  Slavery,  we  should  rather  say 
accounted  for  it.  We  have  since  read  what  Aris 
totle  says  upon  the  subject,  and  find  that  we  were 
right.  Aristotle  shows  that  there  were  those  who 
condemned  Slavery  altogether  as  being  contrary  to 
natural  right,  and  then  put  the  rights  of  the  master 
upon  the  same  foundation  with  Carlyle,  namely, 
Might.  This  he  does  rather  as  if  he  were  summing 
up  what  might  be  said  on  that  side,  than  as  if  he 
were  stating  or  defending  opinions  of  his  own. 


C  1963 

The  theory,  after  the  elimination  of  everything 
unessential,  reduces  itself  to  this — that  it  is  the  nat 
ural  law  for  the  wiser  to  be  master  of  the  less  wise. 
It  will  appear  at  once  that  it  is  a  non  seguitur  to  say 
that  this  involves  an  ownership,  or  that  one  of  the 
terms  of  the  relation  is  the  "  beneficent  whip."  The 
government,  we  may  admit;  the  mode  of  it  is  a  totally 
different  question.  The  Sun  governs  the  planets  of 
its  system  without  the  aid  of  the  lash,  and  we  cannot 
help  thinking  that  unwisdom  is  properly  subjected 
to  wisdom  in  a  manner  more  akin  to  an  eternal  law 
of  gravitation,  than  to  the  sudden  and  violent  appli 
cation  of  physical  force. 


PSEUDO-CONSERVATISM 


J_ 


F  this  country  may  claim  any  advantage  over  Eu 
rope,  it  is  surely  not  in  externals,  but  in  its  political 
ideas  and  in  the  greater  freedom  for  their  develop 
ment.  It  is  the  world  of  Experiment.  The  Elements 
of  our  social  condition  have  not  so  hardened  as  that 
new  combinations  are  impossible  without  disruption. 
The  great  currents  of  routine  and  tradition  set  not 
so  strongly  through  settled  channels  that  the  ship  of 
state  cannot  be  kept  off  the  lee  shore  without  coming 
to  an  anchor,  to  remain  stationary  while  the  cables 
hold,  or  until  some  stronger  gale  drives  it  among  the 
breakers.  Our  growth  is  not  merely  that  of  the  poly 
pus,  but  every  new  organization  which  springs  out  of 
us  and  gradually  detaches  itself  from  us,  contains 
in  itself  original  elements,  based  either  upon  expe 
rience,  or  upon  theory,  to  be  tried  and  rejected,  or 
added  to  the  definite  formula  of  political  science. 
Freedom  of  autochthonic  development  is  our  peculiar 
privilege  and  safeguard,  and  the  touch  of  Europe 
brings  only  disease  and  vice  to  us  as  to  the  islanders 
of  the  South  Sea. 


C  »98  ] 

But  there  is  among  us  a  class  who  seem  always  to 
forget  that  the  important  word  America  must  form 
one  term  of  all  our  political  equations.  They  read 
European  histories,  reviews,  and  newspapers,  and 
apply  to  our  affairs  whatever  principles  they  succeed 
in  extracting  from  them.  It  is  not  seldom  the  case 
that  Greece  and  Rome,  even,  furnish  their  wisest 
saws  and  most  modern  instances.  The  courses  and 
periods  of  Commonwealths  are  not  to  be  predicted 
with  that  mathematical  certainty  which  will  give  us 
within  a  hair's  breadth  the  place  of  a  planet  at  any 
given  time.  Human  nature,  it  is  true,  must  always 
be  the  basis  of  our  calculations,  but  we  must  first 
carefully  examine  under  what  novel  conditions  it 
may  act  or  suffer,  and  make  full  allowance  for  dis 
turbing  and  accelerating  forces.  Nevertheless,  these 
well  meaning  persons  would  introduce  by  force  into 
our  Body  Politic  a  certain  antiseptic  ingredient 
which  they  call  Conservatism,  much  in  the  same  way 
that  timber  is  injected  with  chemical  substances  to 
keep  it  from  rotting.  They  forget  that  it  is  only 
dead  wood  which  is  treated  in  this  way  and  that 
Nature  has  provided  in  the  sap  and  its  unhindered 
circulation  the  surest  preservative  for  the  living  tree. 

Nothing  that  is  alive  and  healthy  needs  any  as 
sistance  toward  its  own  conservation.  All  such  pre 
cautionary  measures  are  at  best  but  mummy-making, 


C 

and  prolong  decay  without  preventing  it.  The  Chi 
nese  offer  the  readiest  example  of  a  nation  embalmed 
alive,  and  the  result  does  not  encourage  imitation. 
Commonwealths  need  a  decent  apparel  of  constitu 
tions  and  laws,  but  do  not  need  to  be  clothed  in 
strait-jackets.  Our  surest  safeguard  in  America  is 
that  we  are  the  busiest  people  in  the  world,  and 
that  every  drop  of  our  blood  is  in  rapid  circulation. 

We  said  every  drop,  but  there  is  one  spot  of  stag 
nation,  and  it  is  to  the  maintenance  of  this  just  as 
it  is  that  the  efforts  of  our  self-styled  conservatives 
are  directed.  If  our  timid  friends  would  only  con 
fine  themselves  to  raising  money  for  the  erection  of 
pillars  to  keep  the  sky  from  falling,  or  to  calling 
public  meetings  to  preserve  the  precession  of  the 
Equinoxes,  we  should  never  meddle  with  them.  But 
they  not  only  claim  for  themselves  this  holy  name  of 
Preservers,  they  also  stigmatize  as  Destructives  all 
who  will  not  join  them.  We  wish  to  have  the  titles 
applied  so  that  they  will  no  longer  be  nicknames  but 
designations. 

The  true  Conservative  is  he  who  strives  to  form 
some  just  augury  of  the  Inevitable  and  to  make 
ready  for  its  coming,  who  does  all  in  his  power  to 
give  affairs  such  a  direction  that  the  Future  may  en 
ter  as  a  Fulfiller  and  not  as  an  Avenger.  In  history 
he  seeks  a  lesson  and  not  the  old  clothes  to  dress  a 


C  20°  3 

scarecrow  in.  But  we  are  a  people  of  yesterday, 
without  a  past,  without  traditions,  who  feel  no  re 
verence  for  laws  which  are  the  work  of  our  own 
hands,  and  must  be  taught  it  ?  Often  said,  but  none 
the  truer  though  a  wilderness  of  parrots  repeat  it. 
People  respect  laws  passed  by  themselves  because 
they  are  commonly  the  result  of  a  need  previously 
felt.  The  statute-books  are  gauges  marking  the  pop 
ular  level  of  intelligence  at  successive  periods.  Laws 
become  a  dead  letter  precisely  in  proportion  as  they 
become  unrepresentative  and  fail  to  embody  the  lat 
est  wisdom  of  the  people.  It  is  as  impossible  to  re- 
enact  a  foregone  state  of  opinion  as  to  bring  General 
Taylor  back  to  life  by  a  resolve  of  Congress.  More 
over,  Truth  is  not  of  yesterday,  is  not  without  a 
past,  nor  without  traditions,  and  laws  made  in  ac 
cordance  with  living  principles  have  a  way  of  mak 
ing  themselves  respected.  The  fact  that  stones  are 
hard  and  that  fire  will  burn  is  not  yet  made  a  part 
of  the  regular  course  of  teaching  in  our  Common 
Schools. 

The  Fugitive  Slave  Bill  is  at  present  the  favorite 
text  of  our  political  Talmudists.  Here  is  an  oppor 
tunity  for  us  to  sacrifice  ourselves  to  our  convictions 
of  the  sacredness  of  Law.  An  odd  kind  of  vicarious 
martyrdom  this,  where  William  and  Ellen  Craft  go 
to  the  stake,  and  we  rise  phoenix-like  from  their 


c  201  n 

ashes  as  Secretaries  of  State,  Ambassadors  or  Col 
lectors  with  ten  thousand  a  year.  Such  flames  under 
gone  by  proxy  are  not  so  scorching,  we  fancy,  as 
those  of  Smithfield.  This  way  of  employing  a  vice- 
martyr  is  an  invention  worthy  of  the  age  which 
gave  birth  to  the  electric  telegraph.  Suppose  the 
position  and  the  salary  should  also  be  enjoyed  by 
substitute  ? 

That  is  strangely  enough  called  Law  which  com 
pels  anarchy  and  renders  illegality  permanent.  But 
it  is  the  Law,  we  are  told,  and  therefore  we  must 
obey  it.  Besides,  it  is  no  worse  than  the  law  of  '93. 
Small  consolation,  when  we  consider  that  an  interval 
of  fifty-seven  years  divides  them.  Excellent  friends, 
you  forget  that  the  Time  When  materially  affects 
the  aspect  of  all  human  actions.  You  must  intro 
duce  a  bill  at  the  next  session  of  Congress  repealing 
and  abolishing  the  Nineteenth  Century.  It  is  that 
which  really  stands  in  your  way,  and  gives  you  so 
much  trouble.  It  is  that  which  has  got  into  the  legs 
of  the  slaves  and  the  heads  of  the  constituencies. 
We  can  understand  a  man  who  affirms  his  belief 
that  Slavery  is  the  natural  condition  of  any  part  of 
mankind,  but  when  one  tells  us  that  he  believes  Slav 
ery  to  be  wrong  and  unnatural  and  at  the  same  time 
would  support  a  law  intended  to  preserve  it,  we  are 
at  a  loss.  His  notion  must  be  that  God  and  Destiny 


£    202    ] 

can  be  bound  by  a  string  of  Caucus  resolutions.  It 
comes  to  mind  now,  also,  for  the  first  time,  that  we 
have  traditions  and  a  past.  Men  are  yet  alive  who 
felt  the  first  thrill  of  that  fateful  Declaration,  who 
can  remember  that  famous  war  carried  through 
"  upon  a  preamble."  There  are  descendants  among 
us  of  those  who  sheltered  Goffe,  Whalley,  and  Dix- 
well  —  ominous  names,  recalling  the  history  of  that 
King  who  resisted  the  progress  of  Events,  who 
maintained  privilege  and  prescription  till  the  axe  cut 
through  life  and  prerogative  together. 

Mr.  Webster  has  been  filling  the  newspapers  lately 
with  certificates  of  the  efficacy  of  his  famous  Union 
Pill  and  Gunpowder  Cement.  He  warrants  his  pat 
ent  medicine  as  a  conservative,  but  of  what  ?  Why, 
the  pill  will  enable  a  man  to  enjoy  for  years  his  ex 
cellent  —  bad  constitution  ;  it  will  maintain  every 
one  in  the  quiet  profession  of  his  time-honored  — 
boil ;  it  will  secure  the  prolonged  activity  of  our  he 
reditary  —  scrofula.  And  the  Gunpowder  Cement  ? 
That  needs  no  testimonials,  for  everybody  knows 
what  gunpowder  will  do. 

"  Resolved,"  say  the  London  Aldermen,  "  that 
we  will  have,  and  of  right  ought  to  have,  our  an 
cient  stenches  and  foul  gases."  Providence  calls 
no  public  meetings  and  passes  no  resolutions  that 
the  Aldermen  hear  of,  but  by  and  by  quietly  comes 


C 

in  the  Cholera.  So  it  will  be  here.  Preserve  the 
Union  by  throwing  coals  into  whatever  is  explo 
sive  in  it,  inculcate  reverence  for  the  Constitution 
by  mumbo-jumboing  forever  before  that  part  of  it 
which  is  wholly  unrevered,  and  in  good  time  enter 
Insurrection  and  Disruption.  Mr.  Webster  repeats 
everywhere  ^Esop's  fable  of  the  bundle  of  rods,  and 
he  might  select  a  very  handsome  fagot  as  an  illus 
tration  from  those  which  Time  has  in  pickle  for 
him.  But  if  he  has  ever  been  into  a  shop  he  must 
have  seen  the  pack-thread  snap  by  being  too  tightly 
drawn  around  the  parcel,  and  perhaps  it  might 
profit  him  to  turn  over  in  his  mind  this  little  fact  in 
connection  with  the  fable.  We  did  not  get  rid  of 
George  III.  to  enthrone  a  Constitution  as  pigheaded 
as  he.  If  we  are  to  live  we  must  grow.  The  oak- 
tree  planted  in  the  flower-pot,  as  Goethe  says  of 
Hamlet,  must  burst  it  or  die. 


END    OF    VOLUME    II 


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